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From the level of networks of genes and proteins to the embryonic and neural levels, information at various scales drives biological self-organization. Living systems process this information to an astonishing degree of accuracy  and generate the complex patterns of life. Physicists, mathematicians, engineers, and biologists are collaborating extensively to unravel the role of information in biological processes. This discussion meeting aims to focus on recent advances in the general principles of information processing and self-organization in living systems.SpeakersVijay Balasubramanian, Univ Pennsylvania, USAUpi Bhalla, NCBS-TIFR, IndiaManoj Gopalakrishnan, TIFR, IndiaStephan W Grill, BIOTEC, TU-Dresden, GermanyAnn M Hermundstad, Univ Pennsylvania, USAGarud Iyengar, Columbia Univ, USA *Gautam I Menon, IMSc, IndiaSharad Ramanathan, Harvard Univ, USAMadan Rao, NCBS-TIFR, IndiaGuillaume Salbreux, Francis Crick Institute, UKG V Shivashankar, MBI, SingaporeCaroline Uhler, MIT, USA* To be...

From the level of networks of genes and proteins to the embryonic and neural levels, information at various scales drives biological self-organization. Living systems process this information to an astonishing degree of accuracy  and generate the complex patterns of life. Physicists, mathematicians, engineers, and biologists are collaborating extensively to unravel the role of information in biological processes. This discussion meeting aims to focus on recent advances in the general principles of information processing and self-organization in living systems.SpeakersVijay Balasubramanian, Univ Pennsylvania, USAUpi Bhalla, NCBS-TIFR, IndiaManoj Gopalakrishnan, TIFR, IndiaStephan W Grill, BIOTEC, TU-Dresden, GermanyAnn M Hermundstad, Univ Pennsylvania, USAGarud Iyengar, Columbia Univ, USA *Gautam I Menon, IMSc, IndiaSharad Ramanathan, Harvard Univ, USAMadan Rao, NCBS-TIFR, IndiaGuillaume Salbreux, Francis Crick Institute, UKG V Shivashankar, MBI, SingaporeCaroline Uhler, MIT, USA* To be...

The last couple of decades have seen a major revolution in the field of condensed matter physics, where the severe limitations of conventional paradigms (viz., spontaneous symmetry breaking and Landau’s Fermi liquid framework) have been repeatedly exposed in context of a large number of correlated electronic systems. This has led to a wide search for a more general framework that can successfully capture the low energy properties of the unconventional quantum many-body systems. The quickly expanding frontiers of this field have, among other things,  explored ideas involving different ways of manifestation of symmetries in condensed matter systems, role of quantum entanglement, bulk-edge correspondence and gauge-gravity duality. This has thrown wide open newer frontiers, in turn, for fruitful exchanges between condensed matter and quantum field theory, and string theory, which have seen parallel remarkable developments over the last two decades.In view of these current advances, the dis...

The last couple of decades have seen a major revolution in the field of condensed matter physics, where the severe limitations of conventional paradigms (viz., spontaneous symmetry breaking and Landau’s Fermi liquid framework) have been repeatedly exposed in context of a large number of correlated electronic systems. This has led to a wide search for a more general framework that can successfully capture the low energy properties of the unconventional quantum many-body systems. The quickly expanding frontiers of this field have, among other things,  explored ideas involving different ways of manifestation of symmetries in condensed matter systems, role of quantum entanglement, bulk-edge correspondence and gauge-gravity duality. This has thrown wide open newer frontiers, in turn, for fruitful exchanges between condensed matter and quantum field theory, and string theory, which have seen parallel remarkable developments over the last two decades.In view of these current advances, the dis...

The financial meltdown of 2008 in the US stock markets and the subsequent protracted recession in the Western economies have accentuated the need to understand the dynamic interface between the modern financial sector and the overall macroeconomy. The dominant economic framework based on Neoclassical economics that informs policy making has turned out to be grossly inadequate for this purpose as it failed to either explain or predict the nature and cause of the sudden financial meltdown and the long economic recession that followed. The conceptual and methodological gaps and fault lines of the dominant framework have necessitated approaches that go beyond conventional analyses of individual or micro economic risk and the types failures caused by imperfect working of the price mechanism in financial markets. The challenge instead is to set the problem of modern finance in the macroeconomic context.This School aims to introduce the participants to the alternative analytical frameworks to...

The financial meltdown of 2008 in the US stock markets and the subsequent protracted recession in the Western economies have accentuated the need to understand the dynamic interface between the modern financial sector and the overall macroeconomy. The dominant economic framework based on Neoclassical economics that informs policy making has turned out to be grossly inadequate for this purpose as it failed to either explain or predict the nature and cause of the sudden financial meltdown and the long economic recession that followed. The conceptual and methodological gaps and fault lines of the dominant framework have necessitated approaches that go beyond conventional analyses of individual or micro economic risk and the types failures caused by imperfect working of the price mechanism in financial markets. The challenge instead is to set the problem of modern finance in the macroeconomic context.This School aims to introduce the participants to the alternative analytical frameworks to...

The International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS) and the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), are organizing a Winter School on Quantitative Systems Biology from 8 to 19 December 2015 (QSB2015), as part of the ICTP- ICTS Programme in Biology. This is the fourth school in the series on Quantitative Systems Biology, held alternately at Trieste and Bangalore. QSB2015 will be hosted in the ICTS campus in Bangalore.The School is targeted towards young researchers, particularly those at the PhD and post -doctoral level with backgrounds in the physical and mathematical sciences and engineering, who are working in biology or hope to do so. It will give participants a broad introduction to open problems in modern biology, and provide pedagogical instruction on new quantitative approaches being used to address those problems. The main school will be preceded by an intensive three-day pre-school (5-7 December, 2015) targeted to non-biologists.QSB2015 is centere...