Evolution: Foundations, Fundamentals, and Disease; Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong

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The proposed meeting, "Evolution: Foundations, Fundamentals, and Disease" will be held between December 7 and December 10 at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology will include three main themes: (I) Re-examining the Foundations of Evolution, (II) modeling evolution using the concepts of physics, and (III) The Role of Evolution in Biological Disease. The primary approach in the first two sections will be to use ideas from physics of complex systems to develop a complementary to biology understanding of evolution, while the second part will focus on disease evolution. The participants will address fundamental issues of the evolution of disease from both theoretical and experimental perspective. This is a perfect time to re-examine the foundations of evolution and its consequences. Humanity is now in the midst of a new flu pandemic and Asia, and Hong Kong in particular, has been at the epicenter of pandemics in the past. These pandemics are terrifying and at the same time a lesson on how little we understand about evolution dynamics. While there have been many, many meetings devoted to evolution, because of the 150th Anniversary of the publication of the Origin of the Species, and the 200th Anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, most of these meetings have been intensely biological in nature. In contrast this meeting does not aim to praise Darwin but rather critically look at the foundations of evolution and the connection between evolution and disease progression from a physics perspective. The meeting will bring together physicists and biologists to discuss basic the questions of evolution from the point of view of physics and will be an excellent forum for interdisciplinary research. In addition it will bring senior as well as junior scientists from different countries and will not only contribute to the education of the next generation of interdisciplinary researchers, but also to international cooperation in science.