GRC-Physics Research & Education: The complex intersection of Biology and Physics

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This award supports participants to attend a "Gordon Conference" on the complex intersection of Physics and Biology with respect to both research and education. The fields of biological physics and the physics education of biology and other biological-science students have experienced tremendous growth in recent years. New findings, applications, and technologies in biological physics are having far reaching consequences that affect and influence the science community, the education of future scientists and biotechnology workers, and the general population.The Gordon Conferences have a long and rich history of serving as the key meeting places for many important researchers in science over the years. This conference brings together biologists, biophysicists, physicists, physics teachers, physics education researchers, textbook authors, biology education researchers and biology teachers, as well as graduate and undergraduate student researchers in these fields, to discuss connections between, and how students learn, these disciplines. The focus topic is timely as textbooks are being written and new courses and laboratories are being developed and implemented, not to mention the publication of Bio2010 and its calls for a strong interdisciplinary curriculum that includes physical science. Because of the large number of biology students taking introductory physics, and the fact that most of these courses do not support the needs of these students, there is a great potential for this conference to have deep impact.