Michal Roitman is a PhD student in the Department of Physics of Complex Systems Sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, studying collective behaviour in ants under the supervision of Prof. Ofer Feinerman. She has a BSc in Biology and Psychology from the Hebrew university in Jerusalem and MSc in Life Sciences from the Weizmann Institute.
In her PhD research, Michal studies nest building in Australian weaver ants, an arboreal species that build their nest from tree leaves. This process combines many steps of cooperation and her goal is to understand both the physical perspective of the forces applied on the leaves together with the decision making mechanism of the ants as a group. Michal developed a novel-3D system that allows investigating the dynamics of the position of the leaves, and she is currently conducting a series of experiments to determine how and when the ants decide collectively to finish building their nest, and what are the features of a complete nest.