IOP Conferences Topical Research Meeting - Physical Principles of Biological and Active Systems 6 - 7 January 2016, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK Organised by the Institute of Physics together with the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics

IOP Conferences:

This meeting will feature a series of keynote presentations from senior figures in the physics of biological and active systems.

Confirmed speakers:

• Robert Austin (Princeton)
• Tobias Bollenbach (IST Austria)
• Ray Goldstein (Cambridge)
• Jean-François Joanny (Institut Curie)
• Rhoda Hawkins (Sheffield)
• Cristina Marchetti (Syracuse)
• Ben Simons (Cambridge)
• Joel Stavans (Weizmann Institute)

The complete line-up of speakers will be announced in due course.

In addition to the keynote talks, participants will have the opportunity to contribute to focus sessions on antimicrobial resistance, collective dynamics of motile organisms and subcellular statistical physics. A small number of contributions will be selected as short oral presentations in these sessions.

Other contributions can be presented as posters for the duration of the topical meeting. Contributions relevant to the physical principles of biological and active systems falling outside these three topical areas may also be submitted as poster presentations. We particularly encourage submissions from - and may give priority to - early career researchers (PhD students and postdoctoral researchers).

The topics covered in each of these sessions is as detailed below. The focus sessions will not run in parallel, so please aim your contribution at a broad audience.

• Focus Session 1. Antimicrobial resistance
  Chair: Dr Bartek Waclaw
  The session will provide a forum to discuss recent applications of physics to biological evolution and antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The topics will include (but do not have to be restricted to) new single-cell imaging methods in AMR research, physical methods of quantifying AMR, experimental and mathematical models of the evolution and transmission of AMR, and statistical characterization of AMR fitness landscapes.
  
• Focus Session 2. Collective dynamics of motile organisms
  Chair: Prof Davide Marenduzzo
  This section will be focussed on multiscale descriptions of suspensions of self-motile active particles or organisms, and their emerging collective behaviour. The topics will include (but not be restricted to): statistical mechanics of bacterial suspensions; hydrodynamics of active gels and active fluids; models for cell motility and for collective behaviour in cells and cell suspensions; collective behaviour in systems of dividing cells or bacterial colonies.
  
• Focus Session 3. Subcellular statistical physics
  Chair: Prof Martin Evans
  The session will be focussed on the subcellular arena where nonequilibrium conditions and stochasticity are the norm. The topics will include (but not be restricted to): active transport in biological systems; gene regulation; number fluctuations at small concentrations of messenger molecules; biochemical networks and their dynamics; search processes and their efficiency; modelling of intra- and intercellular signalling.

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