Conference: SICB 2024: Computational and Physical Models in Research and Teaching to Explore Form-Function Relationships

该会议奖支持参与者在2024年1月的综合与比较生物学学会（SICB）年会上将计算和物理模型纳入生物学研究和教学的研讨会和相关研讨会。随着计算能力的普及以及大学校园中“创客空间”的快速扩张和建设，生物学家可以随时使用数学、物理和工程建模工具，这些工具提供了独特的机会来促进对生物体形式和功能关系的理解。然而，在生物科学中广泛采用物理模型和计算建模方法往往受到难以形成适当的跨学科合作以及生物学学生技术培训差距的阻碍。该奖项支持跨学科研讨会，将促进生物学家，物理学家和工程师之间的讨论和构思，并将加速新的跨学科合作的形成。研讨会突出了早期职业研究人员和科学界代表性不足的群体成员。研讨会的成果包括一个合作研讨会和综合论文，将确定创新的方法和优先事项，应用物理模型和计算建模，以彻底改变生物学知识，以及创建一个框架，融入生物学课程。生物系统的涌现行为是多个复杂和相互关联的系统精确协调的结果，使快速信号处理和适当的效应器输出成为可能。通过将传统的生物学实验与物理或计算建模相结合，可以实现对这些过程的机械理解。应用这些工具的激活障碍可能很高，特别是对于那些刚开始建模的实验室。同样，必须教育未来的科学家在他们自己的研究和教学中永久使用建模方法。该奖项支持跨学科研讨会，将促进生物学家，物理学家和工程师之间的讨论和构思，包括早期职业科学家，国际研究人员和科学界代表性不足的团体成员，并将加速新的研究和教育合作的形成。通过展示跨学科研究和教学方法的潜力，研讨会和讲习班将激励科学家在自己的工作中实施模型，并确定这样做的途径。专题讨论会的发言摘要将发表在SICB杂志，综合和比较生物学。该期刊将包括一份共同撰写的前瞻性论文，回顾该领域的现状，并强调将继续推动生物知识发现和这些工具的跨学科整合的研究重点。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

This conference award supports participants in a symposium and associated workshop on incorporating computational and physical models in biological research and teaching at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) in January 2024. With greater universal access to computational power as well as the rapid expansion and construction of “maker spaces” across college campuses, mathematical, physical, and engineering modeling tools that offer unique opportunities to advance understanding of organismal form and function relationships are readily available to biologists. However, broad adoption of physical models and computational modeling approaches in the biological sciences is often thwarted by the difficulty of forming appropriate transdisciplinary collaborations as well as gaps in technical training of biology students. This award supports a transdisciplinary symposium that will catalyze discussions and ideation among biologists, physicists, and engineers, and will accelerate the formation of new transdisciplinary collaborations. The symposium highlights early-career researchers and members of groups under-represented in the sciences. Outcomes of the symposium include a collaborative workshop and synthetic paper that will identify innovative approaches and priorities for applying physical models and computational modeling to revolutionize biological knowledge, as well as creating a framework for integration into biology curricula. Emergent behaviors of a biological system are the result of the precise coordination of multiple complex and interconnected systems, enabling rapid signal processing followed by appropriate effector output. A mechanistic understanding of these processes can be achieved by integrating traditional biology experiments with physical or computational modeling. The activation barrier for applying these tools can be high especially for those labs new to modeling. Likewise, it is imperative to educate future scientists to perpetuate the use of modeling approaches in their own research and teaching. The award supports a transdisciplinary symposium that will catalyze discussions and ideation among biologists, physicists, and engineers, including early-career scientists, international researchers, and members of groups under-represented in the sciences, and will accelerate the formation of new research and education collaborations. By showcasing the potential of cross-disciplinary research and teaching approaches, the symposium and workshop will inspire scientists to implement models in their own work and identify pathways for doing so. Summaries of the symposium presentations will be published in the SICB journal, Integrative and Comparative Biology. That issue will include a jointly-authored, forward-looking perspective paper reviewing the state of the field and highlighting research priorities that will continue pushing the limits of biological knowledge discovery and transdisciplinary integration of these tools.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.