Workshop: Systems and Control Theory for Synthetic Biology

合成生物学是为能源、环境和医疗应用提供有用功能的生物分子过程工程。在过去的几年里，系统和控制理论工具在合成生物学中的使用急剧增加。系统与控制理论在许多工程领域，主要是在电气、机械和航空航天工程中，为获得理想的特性，包括在存在环境扰动时的稳定和健壮的系统行为，提供了重要的工具。生物分子过程对环境缺乏稳健性，这一直阻碍着该领域的进展。这个问题引起了研究界对使用系统和控制理论工具来装备具有健壮行为的工程生物分子过程的显著兴趣。该奖项资助了一个研讨会，让合成生物学、系统和控制理论在工程生物学中的应用以及利用计算机科学获得生物设计抽象的专家聚集在一起。来自当地大学的学生将被邀请参加工作坊。研讨会将于2020年春夏举行，旨在讨论工程生物学当前的挑战，并为如何使用和扩展系统和控制理论方法来应对其中一些挑战制定研究路线图。这一路线图将为研究人员提供一系列丰富的问题进行调查，并将向决策者通报额外资金可能开启合成生物学产生社会影响的途径的领域。研讨会包括更广泛的会谈、技术会谈和几个小组讨论。小组讨论结果的陈述将作为研讨会报告的基础，该报告将被公开传播。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Synthetic Biology is the engineering of biomolecular processes for useful functionalities for energy, environment, and medical applications. In the past few years, there has been a dramatic increase of the use of systems and control theoretic tools in synthetic biology. Systems and Control Theory has been instrumental in many engineering domains, chiefly in Electrical, Mechanical, and Aerospace engineering for obtaining desirable properties, including stable and robust system behavior in the presence of environmental perturbations. Biomolecular processes suffer from lack of robustness to context and this has been hampering progress in the field. This problem has sparked notable interest in the research community towards using systems and control theoretic tools for equipping engineered biomolecular processes with robust behavior. This award funds a workshop to bring together experts in synthetic biology, in the application of systems and control theory to engineering biology, and in the use of computer science to obtain biological design abstractions. Students from local universities will be invited to the workshop. The workshop, to be held in Spring/Summer 2020, seeks to discuss current challenges in engineering biology and to set a research roadmap for how systems and control theoretic approaches may be used and expanded to tackle some of these challenges. This roadmap will provide researchers a rich set of problems to investigate and will inform decision makers about areas where additional funding may unlock the route of synthetic biology to societal impact. The workshop includes broader talks, technical talks, and several group discussions. Presentations of the outcomes of the group discussions will form the basis for a workshop report, which will be publicly disseminated.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.