Massimo Vergassola

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Papers

Total Citations

997

H-Index

About

Massimo Vergassola is a theoretical physicist and computational biologist whose research sits at the fascinating intersection of statistical physics, sensory navigation, and biological search strategies. He is best known for pioneering the concept of "infotaxis," introduced in a landmark 2007 paper that has garnered over 900 citations. This influential work proposed an elegant information-theoretic strategy by which agents — biological or artificial — can locate sources of odor or particles in turbulent environments where concentration gradients are unreliable or absent. Rather than following chemical gradients directly, infotaxis guides a searcher toward regions that maximally reduce uncertainty about the source location, revolutionizing how scientists think about olfactory navigation. Vergassola has continued to develop and extend these ideas, exploring search strategies in random, dilute environments where classical chemotaxis breaks down, as reflected in his 2009 work on chasing information. His more recent research has turned to trail-following behaviors in animals such as ants, mice, and dogs, investigating the puzzling "casting" maneuver that chemotaxis alone cannot explain. Across his career, Vergassola has fundamentally shaped our understanding of how organisms extract and exploit environmental information to navigate complex, noisy worlds.