Spearheaded by IAS Visiting Professor Robert Austin from
Princeton University, a 5-day focused program on Physics
Approach to Simplifying Complexity in Biology was held on
15-19 December 2014 at IAS.
Participated by approximately 50 participants from US,
Chile, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Mainland
China and Poland, the program was a continuation of the
IAS Workshop on Evolution: Foundations, Fundamentals,
and Disease previously held in December 2009 in which the
limits of neoclassical evolution dynamics were explored. That
workshop laid the seeds for the creation of the Physical
Science - Oncology Centers of the US National Cancer
Institute, which aimed to view cancer evolution dynamics
from an entirely new perspective.
Over 20 distinguished scholars and experts, including Prof
Paul Davies from Arizona State University, delivered their
talks and research findings in the program which tied
together three fundamental physics ideas that emerged from
the previous workshop: first, the thermodynamics of systems
far from equilibrium in complex environments, second, the
dynamics of evolving systems in complex environments, and
third, communication between evolving agents. These
subject areas offer a rich meeting ground for physicists and
biologists to probe fundamental questions regarding the
complexity of life in a hard-science manner.
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Event Highlights
Feb 2015
