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.
[6] Beni has research interests in swarm intelligence, 3D animation, and financial engineering.
[6] He helped found the Journal of Robotic Systems, and between 1982 and 2005 he was also its director.
[6] In 1982, Beni was made a Fellow of the American Physical Society.