Conferences  >  Physics  >  Biophysics, Medical Physics  >  United States

As an interdisciplinary field of study, research that aims to understand multiscale cellular processes is characterized by a diversity of approaches: theory, models, and biological experiments. This range of disciplines and approaches often employ different techniques, perspectives, and “languages” to describe similar ideas, which can be confusing even for seasoned experts. As such, trainees studying multiscale cellular processes must understand diverse perspectives and learn to communicate outside of their own expertise. At this GRS, trainees will have the opportunity to present and learn from their peers who are learning to navigate this rapidly-changing field and will shape its future. The GRS centers discussion and engagement among trainees to foster conversation and collaboration.

Multiscale Processes of Cellular Organization

Biology,    Systems Biology and Computational Biology

At the most fundamental level, physical and chemical laws govern the operations of a living cell. For example, the energetics of a biochemical reaction obey the law of thermodynamics, and the kinetics the law of mass action. At the functional level, however, when, where and at what rate a biomolecule executes its function through its binding to a partner or enzymatic catalysis is stochastic, and can only be described in probabilistic instead of deterministic terms. At this level, the integration between experiments and theories becomes extremely important, because new theories need to be developed to explain stochastic experimental observations and guide further experimental explorations, and experiments need to be conducted to test theoretical predications and establish biological significance.

Bridging Stochastic Physical Theories with Biological Experiments

Biology,    Systems Biology and Computational Biology

This GRS brings together early-career researchers to share ideas on discovering design principles in biological systems and developing biomimetic materials, with an emphasis on structures at all scales. We seek to introduce emerging materials scientists, physicists, engineers, biologists, and chemists to one another with the goal of formulating new ways to inscribe the vital functions found in biological systems into synthetic materials and complex structures. Topics will include recent experimental and theoretical advances in biomimetic soft matter, life-like active materials, non-equilibrium statistical physics, and multiscale mechanics of biological systems.

Emergent Phenomena in Active and Living Materials

The 2023 conference will bring together a cross-disciplinary community of researchers from academia and industry, with the common aim of exploiting the complexity of non-equilibrium processes and architecture material systems to forge a new generation of compliant machines that can adapt to their environment. Together physicists, chemists, computer scientists, and engineers at the forefront of materials science, data science, and process dynamics will discuss novel routes for capitalizing on the vast design space afforded by the synergy between soft materials, non-equilibrium processes, and structural design across nano- to macro-scopic length scales. By re-examining what is conventionally considered a material, a machine or information, we will exchange perspectives on employing advanced materials, theory, modeling, and manufacturing to the creation of compliant material systems that process information, self-regulate, act on their environment, adapt shape, and harvest energy so as to revolutionize next generation of soft robotics, environmental sensors, smart structures, adaptive surfaces, etc. The aim of our GRC is to convene this diverse group of people to generate ideas to bridge interdisciplinary boundaries and to establish an innovative community at the forefront complex active and adaptive material system research.

Optimizing the Synergy Between Architecture, Non-Equilibrium Processes and Materials

Quantitative Hallmarks of the Tumor Microenvironment

Cancer is a disease that affects individual molecules, cells, tissues, organs, and organisms in ways that promote disease. Ultimately, the dynamic interactions among these systems shape the forces that drive tumor initiation, progression, metastatic spread, and disease recurrence. The application of physics and mathematics foundations to the molecular, cellular, tissue, and organ level basis of cancer has revealed fundamental changes during disease that are reflected across cancer types and stages. In this conference we will hear from experts applying physical sciences to cancer to study disease phenomena across scales and systems.

Physical Oncology Across Biological Scales: Signals, Systems, Forces and Fluxes

BPS - The Biophysical Society

We are excited to present the program for the 2023 Annual Biophysical Society Meeting. We can all agree that the last few years represent an epochal moment for science in human history. Basic science discoveries were translated into treatments for human diseases at an astonishing pace. Advances in biophysics at various levels is central to these developments. This meeting will showcase incredible breakthroughs in new drug developments and protein structure prediction. Other symposiums will highlight the emerging complexity of cellular membranes, RNA and genomic organization. Workshops will feature developments in the computational drug discovery, spectroscopic and microscopy approaches for high throughput research. We look forward to seeing you next year in San Diego!

Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara

During animal and plant development, cells self-organize into complex organisms, through the gradual refinement of cellular identities and their arrangement in space. This is an iterative process, which progresses through successive rounds of symmetry breaking, accompanied by changes in molecular and mechanical properties that feed back across multiple scales. Many of the elementary processes underlying developmental patterning and morphogenesis are now well documented, and a growing array of tools is available to observe and manipulate their dynamics. Yet, we lack a set of general principles that explain how they are coordinated in space and time to produce a defined outcome, and comprehensive synthetic approaches that use such principles to recapitulate development in vitro. This program will bring together experimentalists and theoreticians to work towards an integrated view of self-organization. This requires that we examine how the collective dynamics of development emerge from individual cellular behaviors - how cellular decisions in high-dimensional gene expression landscapes are coordinated in patterning, and how cellular force generation and mechanical feedbacks provide a substrate for tissue-scale communication and morphogenesis. Unifying these different processes, the notion of information may provide a common currency for the molecular and mechanical cues that guide development, encouraging us to consider that information is not only conveyed and interpreted but also self-organizes.

morphogenesis, development, plant development, self-organization, theory, quantitative biology, biophysics

Systems Biology and Computational Biology,    Biology

The field of implant materials is now moving from static concepts to dynamic biomaterials that can adapt to stimuli from the living environment. It is an exciting time for biomaterial research. The same is true for robotics, as soft actuated and responsive materials pave the way for the rapidly emerging field of “soft robotics”, from the nano- to the macroscale. The 9th International Conference on Mechanics of Biomaterials and Tissues provides a unique international forum for researchers and practicing engineers from different disciplines to interact and exchange their latest results.

BPS - The Biophysical Society

BPS - The Biophysical Society