Gerardo Beni (born Florence, Italy 21 February 1946) is a professor of electrical engineering at University of California, Riverside who, with Jing Wang, is known as the originator of the term swarm intelligence[1][2] in the context of cellular robotics and the concept of electrowetting,[3] with Susan Hackwood. He also devised, with Xuan-Li Xie, the Xie–Beni index[4] for measuring the validity of fuzzy clustering.
He is the author of "From Swarm Intelligence to Swarm Robotics" in the book Swarm Robotics[5]
Beni is married to Susan Hackwood. They have two children.
In 1970 Beni was admitted to the Laurea in physics at the University of Florence, Florence, Italy.[6]
In 1974, he received his PhD in theoretical physics at UCLA.[6]
Beni has research interests in swarm intelligence, 3D animation, and financial engineering.[7]
Before moving to UC Riverside, he worked at UC Santa Barbara and AT&T Bell Laboratories.[6]
He helped found the Journal of Robotic Systems, and between 1982 and 2005 he was also its director. The journal won the Journal of the Year Award in 1984.[6]
In 1982, Beni was made a Fellow of the American Physical Society. In 1999, he became a Fellow of the AAAS.[6]
Beni has been issued, either alone or in conjunction with other inventors, several patents from the USPTO:[8]