Team

Dr. Hannah Williams

Hannah J. Williams is a behavioural ecologist whose research focuses on the fundamental processes that shape movement decisions in animals. Leader of the Move.inFormation research group at the University of Konstanz as a VolkswagenStiftung Freigeist Fellow.

Her work explores how organisms navigate complex environments in which the energetic consequences of movement are uncertain and constantly changing. By integrating behavioural ecology with physics and information theory, she investigates how animals perceive environmental energy, how they use social cues to reduce uncertainty, and how these processes shape movement patterns across scales.

Christin Albrecht

Use of Social Cues in Competitive Soaring Flight

Christin is a computational neuroscientist and avid paraglider pilot whose research explores how individuals perceive and use social cues when navigating dynamic atmospheric environments. Using competitive paragliding as an experimental platform, she investigates how pilots visually detect and interpret the movements of others to infer the presence of thermals and other invisible airflows. By combining high-resolution flight tracking with behavioural analyses, her work examines how social sampling of atmospheric energy influences movement decisions and performance in complex aerial environments.

Eleonora Gatti

The Economy of Decision Making in Animal Movement

Eleonora is a statistical physicist whose research investigates the energetic foundations of movement decisions. Her work contributes to the development of Optimal Movement Theory, examining how animals balance the energetic rewards of environmental subsidies with the mechanical costs and uncertainty associated with reaching them. By combining theoretical modelling with empirical movement data from soaring systems, she studies how social information can reduce uncertainty and alter the expected payoffs of movement decisions in dynamic energy landscapes.

Katherine Steinfield

Social Soaring Scavengers

Katherine is an ecologist and ornithologist interested in how environmental change influences animal movement and space use. Working within the long-term Andean condor field system in Argentina, she studies how social interactions shape the movement strategies of soaring scavengers navigating mountainous energy landscapes. By combining biologging data with ecological field research, her work also explores how human-driven environmental change may influence movement costs, space use, and the ecological dynamics of these iconic species.