About the Authors

Christian Thiemann

Affiliations Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, United States of America, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen, Germany

Fabian Theis

Affiliations Institute for Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, Helmholtz Center Munich, Neuherberg, Germany, Department of Mathematics, University of Technology Munich, Garching, Germany

Daniel Grady

Affiliation Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, United States of America

Rafael Brune

Affiliations Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, United States of America, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen, Germany

Dirk Brockmann

brockmann@northwestern.edu

Affiliations Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, United States of America, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, Evanston, Illinois, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: DB FT. Analyzed the data: FT CT DG RB. Wrote the paper: CT DG RB DB.