Topic: living systems

Explore whether the physics of glass and jamming transitions can provide shared principles for complex matter, from amorphous solids and granular flows to living systems. The programme combines theoretical, experimental and computational approaches to nonequilibrium dynamics, structural disorder and collective behaviour. Discussions connect soft and active matter with biological processes and medical challenges, seeking research directions that cross the boundaries between physics, chemistry, materials and medicine. 14 December at 10:15 to 18 December at 12:40; Asia/Tokyo (JST, UTC+09:00). At

The school introduces non-equilibrium statistical physics and stochastic processes as tools for noisy, dynamic systems. Lectures cover transport, carbon nanostructures and carbon nanotubes, theoretical and experimental biophysics, and connections between non-equilibrium physics and problems spanning cosmology to living systems. It is designed for master's and doctoral students and early-career postdoctoral researchers, requiring little prior experience of these advanced topics. Participants submit poster abstracts. There is no registration fee; limited attendance grants prioritize participants

Biological mechanisms often have to be reconstructed from indirect measurements such as microscopy images, gene activity and cellular time series. This workshop examines inverse problems in living systems, where noise, complexity and diversity challenge existing mathematical approaches. Mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists and biologists will explore methods including deep learning and models informed by physical constraints to infer hidden cellular, genetic and neural mechanisms from experimental data.

Foundational biology from molecules and cells to organisms, populations, ecosystems and biomes. Named areas include biochemistry, genomics, synthetic biology, animal behavior, physiology and neural systems. Neural-systems research includes developmental, genetic, molecular and cellular organization, sensorimotor activation, synaptic and circuit plasticity, and computational approaches. The call also supports biological datasets and methods for observing, measuring, modeling and manipulating living systems. Single investigators, teams and consortia may propose; routine applications, product or

Investigate living systems using theoretical physics and experimental biology. Topics include cellular development, evolution, chromatin and collective behaviour away from equilibrium.

Paul Middlebrooks and Johannes Jaeger discuss agency in living systems, relevance realization, consciousness, energy efficiency and why biological organisms differ from artificial agents.

Jennifer Prendki discusses whether progress in artificial intelligence requires ideas from living systems, embodiment and consciousness. Drawing on her background in particle physics and AI data curation, she examines the limits of scaling, possible roles for quantum physics, neural interfaces, alignment and the philosophical assumptions behind claims about general intelligence.

Dag Hessen discusses scientific questions about life's origins and the possible transition from chemistry to living systems. Conversation in Norwegian.

It is sometimes said that there are two reasons why physics is so successful as a science. One is that it deals with very simple problems. The other is that it attempts to account only for universal aspects of systems at a desired level of description, with lower level phenomena subsumed into a small number of adjustable parameters. It is a widespread belief that this approach seems unlikely to be useful in biology, which is intimidatingly complex, where “everything has an exception”, and where there are a huge number of undetermined parameters. I will try to argue, nonetheless, that there are

When was the last time you ran into a giant? Chances are never. Almost 100 years ago, JBS Haldane posed an outwardly simple yet complex question – what is the most optimal size (for a biological system)? The living world around us contains a huge diversity of organisms, each with its own characteristic size. Even the size of subcellular organelles is tightly controlled. In absence of physical rulers, how do cells and organisms truly “know” how large is large enough? What are the mechanisms in place to enforce size control? Many of these questions have motivated generations of scientists to lo

The “soft, active, and living matter” community has grown tremendously in recent years, conducting exciting research at the interface between soft matter and biological systems. But are all living systems also soft matter systems? Do the ideas of function (or purpose) in biological systems require us to introduce deep new ideas into the framework of soft matter theories? Does the (often) qualitatively different character of data in biological experiments require us to change the types of experiments we conduct and the goals of our theoretical treatments? Eight speakers will anchor the worksho