2nd Workshop on Biological Distributed Algorithms (BDA 2014)

研讨会的目的是将对分布式算法和生物系统之间的关系感兴趣的计算机科学家和生物学家聚集在一起，目的是通过联合研究使两个领域受益。分布式系统在计算机科学和生物学中很普遍。这两个领域都依赖于相互作用实体的网络--生物学中的分子、细胞和有机体;计算机科学中的移动的和自主机器人设备--来达成联合决策，协调对输入的响应，并在具有挑战性的环境中路由资源和导航。两者都在寻求解决这些问题的有效、稳健和适应自然和竞争环境中预期变化的解决方案。为了探索这些共同的特性和目标，并确定在其中一个领域取得的进展是否可以用于协助其他领域的工作，PI组织了BDA研讨会，将两个领域的科学家聚集在一起，在奥斯汀举行为期两天的会议。技术描述：上述两个领域之间的联系表明，通过计算地思考分布式生物系统中信息处理的设置、要求和目标，研究人员可以实现两个互补的目标：首先，他们可以利用对生物系统如何解决计算问题的见解来帮助设计更灵活、鲁棒和自适应的新型分布式算法。其次，他们可以使用，开发或调整现有的分布式计算理论，以帮助理解生物系统的行为，并提出新的，可测试的假设，以确定这些模型是否符合生物系统的观察行为。为了使这种跨学科的研究，PI组织了BDA研讨会。今年的研讨会计划主要关注计算机科学中的分布式问题与昆虫群体中的通信和协调问题（例如觅食，导航，任务分配，构建）以及大脑中的网络（例如学习，决策，注意力）之间的关系。提交的其他主题包括：同步，受生物系统启发的通信模型，以及群集行为。研讨会将邀请分布式计算和生物社区的领导者进行演讲。还将有来自研究人员在这两个领域的接口工作和海报会议介绍早期阶段的工作联系生物和计算分布式计算的贡献会谈。为了充分利用计算机科学家的现有兴趣，研讨会与分布式计算领域的一个重要和长期会议（DISC：分布式计算国际研讨会）位于同一地点，该会议将于2014年10月在德克萨斯州奥斯汀举行。

General description:The goal of the workshop is to bring together computer scientists and biologists interested in studying the relationships between distributed algorithms and biological systems with the aim of benefiting both fields through joint studies.Distributed systems are prevalent in computer science and biology. Both domains rely on networks of interacting entities - molecules, cells, and organisms in biology; mobile and autonomous robot devices in computer science - to reach joint decisions, coordinate responses to inputs, and to route resources and navigate through challenging environments. Both also seek solutions to these problems that are efficient, robust, and adaptive with respect to changes expected in natural and competitive environments. To explore these shared properties and goals and to determine whether progress made in one of these domains can be used to assist work in the other domain, PIs have organized the BDA workshop to bring together scientists from both areas for a two day meeting in Austin. TX.Technical description:The connections mentioned above between the two areas suggest that by thinking computationally about the settings, requirements, and goals of information processing within distributed biological systems, researchers can achieve two complementary goals: First, they can use insights about how biological systems solve computational problems to aid in designing more flexible, robust, and adaptive novel distributed algorithms. Second, they can use, develop, or adapt existing distributed computing theory to help understand the behavior of biological systems and propose new, testable hypotheses to determine how well such models fit the observed behavior of the biological system. To enable such cross-disciplinary research, PIs have organized the BDA workshop. For this year's workshop, the plan is to primarily focus on relationships between distributed problems in computer science and problems related to communication and coordination in insect colonies (e.g. foraging, navigation, task allocation, construction) and to networks in the brain (e.g. learning, decision-making, attention). Other topics for submissions include: synchronization, communication models inspired by biological systems, and flocking behavior.The workshop will have invited talks from leaders in both the distributed computing and biological communities. There will also be contributed talks from researchers working in the interface of the two domains and a poster session presenting early stage work linking biological and computational distributed computing. To leverage existing interest amongst computer scientists, the workshop is co-located with one of the premiere and long-standing conferences in distributed computing (DISC: The International Symposium on Distributed Computing), which will be held in Austin, TX in October 2014.