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

CSHL 会议：生物科学工程原理，2008 年 12 月 10 日至 13 日在纽约冷泉港实验室举行。

• 批准号: 0904373
• 负责人: David Stewart
• 金额: $ 1.5万
• 依托单位: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-02-01 至 2010-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0904373&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CSHL; Conference; Engineering; Principles; Biological

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.

我们建议为研究生和博士后研究人员提供支持，参加将于2008年12月10日至13日在冷泉港实验室举行的生物系统工程原理会议。会议旨在促进工程师、数学家和生物学家之间跨学科的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各种生物系统感兴趣。这笔资助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。智力优势：通过进化的过程，生命系统保留了它们为了生存而必须解决的偶然问题的解决方案。在过去，理论生物学主要集中于解释这些解决方案背后的物理化学机制，而以功能-解决方案对的形式进行解释的研究相对不成熟，尚未从学科角度进行研究。这次会议将促进理论生物学新方法的发展，更正式地强调设计或工程原理。这里的前提是，尽管生物系统中的解决方案或设计不是工程设计的，而是通过自然选择逐渐产生的，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中以现有形式进行研究。这次会议是由Partha Mitra(CSHL), Richard Murray （Caltech）和其他人组织的一系列研讨会和会议的一部分，以帮助培养一个研究人员社区，研究如何在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得出。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，则需要进行哪些修改。该系列会议，特别是本次CSHL会议，将为生物学研究人员提供一个学习可能与他们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可能有助于理解的生物学问题的机会。在会议的每一个环节将有两个邀请的演讲，一个由生物学家和一个理论家/工程师，整合了一组贡献的演讲，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协作文化，这将是其成功所需要的。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场所，希望继续举行一系列这样的会议，也将鼓励一个持久和进步的理论框架的发展。为了补充会议参与者的直接培训机会，在会议上发表的演讲将被放在一个网站上，以使更广泛的科学界受益。个别演讲者可以选择通过Leading Strand网站公开他们的演讲。