CSHL Conference: Engineering Principles for Biological Sciences, December 10-13, 2008 in Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory, New York.

我们建议为研究生和博士后研究人员参加将于2008年12月10- 13日在冷泉港实验室举行的生物系统工程原理会议提供支持。该会议旨在促进工程师、数学家和生物学家之间的跨学科思想和专业知识交流，这些工程师、数学家和生物学家对通过应用工程原理分析不同的生物系统感兴趣。该基金的支持将用于帮助抵消希望参加会议的研究生和博士后研究人员的费用。在进化的过程中，生命系统保留着偶然出现的解决方案，以解决它们为了生存而必须解决的问题。在过去，理论生物学主要集中在这些解决方案背后的物理化学机制的解释，而功能解决方案对的形式的解释一直在一个相对administered的方式进行研究，并没有从学科的角度来处理。这次会议将促进理论生物学的新兴方法的发展，更正式地强调设计或工程原理。在这里，前提是，虽然生物系统中的解决方案或设计不是工程化的，而是通过自然选择逐步产生的，但它们仍然可以在与人类工程系统一起发展的工程理论框架内以现有形式进行研究。本次会议是Partha Mitra（CSHL）组织的一系列研讨会和会议的一部分，理查德·默里（加州理工学院）和其他人帮助培养一个研究人员社区，致力于研究各种尺度上理解生物系统的理论框架。这些理论的出发点可以从工程系的课程中找到，因此，我们的想法是从现有的主要工程理论（控制、通信、计算）开始，并检查这些理论是否适用于生物系统，如果不适用，需要进行哪些修改。会议系列，特别是这次CSHL会议，将为生物学研究人员提供一个学习与他们的工作相关的工程理论的教育机会，并为工程理论家和计算机科学家提供一个学习生物学问题的机会，他们可能有助于理解。会议的每个环节将有两个特邀演讲，一个由生物学家和一个理论家/工程师，与一组贡献的演讲相结合，从提交的摘要中选择。传播和更广泛的影响：拟议的会议将促进这种新的方法来理解生物系统和跨学科的合作文化，它的成功将需要。会议的地点和形式是鼓励公开讨论和发起合作努力的理想选择，希望一系列持续的此类会议也将鼓励发展一个持久和进步的理论框架。为了补充会议参与者的直接培训机会，会议上发表的演讲将放在一个网站上，以使更广泛的科学界受益。将提供给个人演讲者的选项，使他们的演讲通过领先的网站公开。

We propose to provide support for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to attend aconference on Engineering Principles for Biological Systems, to be held at Cold Spring HarborLaboratory on 10--13 December 2008. The conference is intended to foster cross-disciplinaryexchange of ideas and expertise between engineers, mathematicians and biologists interestedin the analysis of diverse biological systems through the application of engineering principles.Support from this grant would be used to help offset the cost of the conference for graduatestudents and postdoctoral researchers who wish to attend.Intellectual Merit: Through the process of evolution, living systems retain solutions arisen bychance to problems they must solve in order to survive. In the past, theoretical biology haslargely focused on explanations of the physico-chemical mechanisms behind such solutions,while explanation in the form of function-solution pairs has been studied in a relatively ad hocmanner and has not been approached from a disciplinary perspective. This conference willpromote the development of an emerging approach to theoretical biology with more formalemphasis on design or engineering principles. Here, the premise is that although solutions ordesigns in biological systems are not engineered but instead arise incrementally through naturalselection, they may nevertheless be studied in their existing forms in the framework ofengineering theories developed alongside human-engineered systems.This conference is part of a series of workshops and conferences organized by Partha Mitra(CSHL), Richard Murray (Caltech) and others to help foster a community of researchers workingon theoretical frameworks for understanding biological systems across a variety of scales. Astarting point for these theories can be drawn from courses taught in engineering departments.The idea is therefore to start with major existing engineering theories (controls, communication,computation) and to examine whether these apply to biological systems, and if not, whatmodifications are in order. The conference series and this CSHL conference in particular, willprovide an educational opportunity for biological researchers to learn about engineering theorieswhich may be relevant to their work, and for engineering theorists and computer scientists tolearn about biological problems they might help to be understood. Each session at theconference will have a two invited talks, one each by a biologist and a theoretician/engineer,integrated with a set of contributed talks, chosen from submitted abstracts.Dissemination and Broader Impact: The proposed conference will foster this new approach tounderstanding biological systems and the collaborative culture across disciplines that itssuccess will require. The conference venue and format are ideal for encouraging opendiscussion and initiating collaborative efforts, and it is hoped that a continuing series of suchmeetings will also encourage the development of an enduring and progressive theoreticalframework. To complement the direct training opportunity for conference participants, talkspresented at the conference will be put on a website for the benefit of the wider scientificcommunity. Options will be provided to individual presenters to make their talks publiclyavailable through the Leading Strand web site.