Dream Fellowship: Simple Rules for Complex Systems: A shortcut on the path to the "in silico" sewage works.

处理水和废水是可持续城市生存的核心。生物学在我们使用的技术中起着关键作用。然而，我们使用的技术大多是通过系统的试验和错误过程开发出来的。我们之所以这样做，是因为它们极其复杂。一座污水处理厂将容纳超过1亿个细菌，涉及5000多个品种。也就是说，污水处理厂中的细菌数量是银河系中恒星数量的100万倍。然而，我和我的同事们认为，这些治疗系统，就像银河系一样，受到几个相对简单的规则的支配，我相信这些规则可以从非常简单的原则中确定。这份奖学金将给我机会去寻找那些规则。如果我的预感是对的，甚至一半是对的，它将帮助我们设计出新的方法来理解和预测这种系统是如何工作的，并使我们能够更快、更有效地开发新想法。这不仅将帮助工程师最好地利用我们拥有的生物资源，还将使我们能够确定生物学家的一些更雄心勃勃的想法--合成生物学--是否会在真正的开放系统中得到应用。这一奖学金是一种莫大的荣幸。我希望通过花一些时间思考我们如何创造一个环境，让他们也能尽可能地进行最具创造性的工作，来偿还我对我的同事和机构的亏欠。为了做到这一点，我希望看看哪些促进和不促进大学的创造力，利用这些信息来制定一个创造力指数，以指导机构的高级管理人员促进最好的环境，进行令人兴奋的研究。

Treating water and wastewater is central to a sustainable urban existence. Biology plays a key role the technologies we employ. However, the technologies we use have mostly been developed by a process of systematic trial and error. We have done this because they are incredibly complex. A single sewage works will contain more than 100 million billion bacteria comprising over 5000 species. That is, there are one million times more bacteria in a sewage works than there are stars in the galaxy. However, my colleagues and I believe that these treatment systems, like the galaxy, are governed by a handful of relatively simple rules that I believe can be determined from very simple principles. This fellowship will give me the opportunity to search for those rules. If my hunch is right, or even half right it will help us devise new ways to understand and predict how such systems work and enable to develop new ideas more quickly and more efficiently. This will not only help engineers make the very best use of the biological resources we have, it will also enable us to determine if some of the more ambitious ideas of biologists, synthetic biology, will ever find application in real open systems. This fellowship is a tremendous privilege. I hope to repay my debt to my colleagues and institution by spending some of my time thinking about how we create an environment where they too can do the most creative work possible. To do this I hope to look at what does and does not promote creativity in the university to use this information to make a creativity index to guide senior managers in the institution promote the best possible environment for exciting research.