Travel Support Request for Institute for Advanced Study Workshop on Physics Approach to Simplifying Complexity in Biology; Hong Kong University, China; December 15-19, 2014.

Princeton University, Princeton NJ

Investigators

Abstract

The December 15-19, 2014 Workshop on Physics Approach to Simplifying Complexity in Biology will bring together physical scientists together with biologists to address basic science problems in biology. Phyicists and biologists are working together to further our progress in the development of predictive, quantitative biology and this workshop is essential in this direction. The organizers bring scientists to examine both the origins of living matter and the complexity that has evolved with time. The emergent phenomena of life is hardly predictable from the fundamental laws of physics or the theorems of mathematics. Emergent living organisms form a unique state of complex adaptive matter; this complex adaptability presumably has its roots in natural selection because the adaptation of natural selection gives rise to ever increasing fitness. The organizers will bring together the physics and condensed matter communities in Asia with those in the US and Europe and merge them with biologists and ecologists to form a frontier effort that spans multiple disciplines. The range of subjects will be wide, in the hopes that unifying, quantitative themes can be mapped out. The workshop will cover areas ranging from The Origins of Complexity to The Emergence of Collective Behavior to Instability in Complex Adaptive Matter, which has connections to many ill-understood topics such as the dynamics of protein dis-function, collective conflicts in communities, and the fundamental origins of diseases such as cancer viewed from a deep perspective. The impact will be to find unifying, simple but deep principles which can tie together the bewildering complexity of biology from the unified perspective of physics which has been so successful in the past.