Welcome

Dynamic self-organization is a phenomenon that occurs at all levels of biological organization from cells and molecules to populations and ecosystems. Often these systems are layered, exhibiting sharp transitions in structure across a third spatial dimension. In addition, the external environment may influence the dynamics so that the same panoply of self-organizing processes may lead to qualitatively different layering configurations. Examples of real systems include microbial biofilms, epithelial tissues, marine mussel beds, and temperate forests. A challenge for theoretical biology is to develop a paradigm for modeling these complex systems that has sufficient realism to recreate the important features, yet remains mathematically tractable. Especially valuable would be the development of analytical methods capable of extracting the essential dynamics from the detailed process models, facilitating comparison of dynamics across systems.

The goal of this conference is to bring together experts on a wide variety of biological systems and mathematical sciences to educate one-another on their particular research areas, to discuss similarities and differences in their systems and approaches to modeling, and to share ideas on how they could collaborate from this cross-fertilization. A follow-up meeting will be held about one year later.

We hope you can join us for what will be an exciting multidisciplinary exchange of ideas!

Robert A. Desharnais, California State University at Los Angeles
Carlos Robles, California State University at Los Angeles
Richard Murray, California Institute of Technology

 

 

 

 

 

 

This conference is sponsored by the California State University, Los Angeles, and the California Institute of Technology with funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF-EF 0827595)