Jens Krause - Biography#

Jens Krause is a behavioural biologist with a strong interest in collective behaviour and collective intelligence. In his work, he combines highly controlled laboratory studies and modelling with fieldwork in Central & South America, Asia and Western Africa. He has published several books and over 200 articles on the mechanisms and adaptive functions of living in groups in a wide range of vertebrate species. He is currently professor of fish ecology in the Faculty of Life Sciences at the Humboldt University Berlin, Head of Department at the Leibniz-IGB and a member of the executive board of the excellence cluster “Science of intelligence”.

Jens started his university education at the Free University Berlin (Germany) and obtained his PhD from Cambridge University, UK, followed by postdocs at Mount Allison University, Canada, and Princeton University, USA, and held a professorship for behavioural ecology at Leeds University, UK, for several years before moving back to Berlin in 2009. In 2014, he was elected into the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities where he served as deputy speaker for an interdisciplinary committee developing recommendations for the responsible use of AI in society. In 2025 he joined the faculty of the International LIFE Graduate school of the Max Planck Society.

Jens Krause has collaborated with a number of film companies to make documentaries about his research on collective behaviour. This activity has resulted in several documentaries with German National TV, one documentary with National Geographic (“Animal Genius”, 2025), one on the Smithsonian Channel (2025, "Mysteries from Above"), and one with Netflix (2025, “Wild waters” episode 5 “Hide and seek”) in the last five years alone.

Beyond his activities in biology, Jens Krause is a regular guest speaker at medical conferences providing insights into the use of collective intelligence for medical decision-making. And he acts as an advisor on collective behaviour and intelligence for many international companies such as Microsoft, Bosch, Continental, Audi and Porsche. Jens has also taken German high-school students on research trips every year for the last ten years as part of a scheme to give teenagers experience with university-research abroad.