About the Authors

Steven F. Railsback is an adjunct professor in the mathematical modeling graduate program at Humboldt State University (now California Polytechnic State University Humboldt) and a consulting environmental engineer and ecologist in Arcata, California. He was formerly on the research staff at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and has worked with individual-based ecological and economic models since the mid-1990s. Much of his research is reported at Cal Poly Humboldt’s individual-based modeling site.

Volker Grimm is a senior scientist in the Department of Ecological Modeling, Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research UFZ, Leipzig; a Member of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig; and professor at the University of Potsdam, Germany. His research is documented at his UFZ home page.

We have been collaborating and teaching together for 20 years. Our 2005 book Individual-based Modeling and Ecology was the first major monograph on individual-/agent-based modeling, and well over 10,000 copies of our books have now sold. Between us, we have worked on approximately 80 agent-based models and over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, and supervised dozens of graduate students.