In this talk, I will share two stories. First, I will share our discoveries on why aquatic worms braid, tangle, and knot with their neighbors to form extraordinary living “blobs”. These soft, squishy “living polymers” shape-morph, crawl, float, and untangle – the stuff of science fiction. Through mathematical models and robotic analogs, I will explain how these worms solve Gordian knot problems, inspiring active, topological tunable robotic swarms.

Second, I will explore the century-old practice of sheepdog trials to uncover strategies for controlling noisy, indecisive herds of sheep. In these competitions, sheep stochastically switch between following and ignoring control signals, yet skilled dog-handler teams excel at herding and splitting them on demand. Using simulations and temporal network theory, I will demonstrate how stochastic indecisiveness—a behavior often seen as a challenge—can instead be harnessed to efficiently control noisy swarms, with applications in swarm robotics, opinion dynamics, and adaptive networks.