Information theory and computational complexity have emerged as central concepts in the study of biological and physical systems, in both the classical and quantum realm. The low-energy landscape of classical and quantum systems can be characterized in terms of constraint satisfaction problems, with the physical behavior of these theories – for example, glassy behavior – governed by the computational complexity of such problems. Information theory also provides a language for laying the foundations of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, and plays a central role in understanding the emergence of a small number of useful parameters in models of physical and biological phenomena.This school, organized jointly by the ICTS and Brandeis University, will cover a variety of forefront research topics in physics and biology, in which information and computation play a central role:• Thermodynamics of information processing• Coding and computation in statistical mechanics• Quantum information i...
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