Symposium Support: Combining experiments with modeling and computational methods to study animal locomotion (Charleston, January 3-7, 2012)

2012年综合与比较生物学学会会议的研讨会和相关研讨会的目标是鼓励有机体生物学的研究人员利用流体-结构相互作用问题、随机建模和复杂流体和材料的最新计算进展来回答力学、功能形态学和比较生理学的基本问题。这次会议的目标之一是吸引初级研究人员来研究这些类型的问题，考虑到美国国家科学基金会（NSF）新设立的博士后奖学金，这次会议尤其及时。生物学与数学和物理科学的交叉？计算方法的最新进展使大规模逼真的动物运动模拟成为可能。这导致了许多运动的数学和计算研究，目的是改进微型空气和水下航行器的设计，促进改进数值方法的发展，并加强我们对稳定性和机动性的理解。这样的数学研究如何能提高我们在环境和生理背景下对生物体的理解，仍然相对未被探索。例如，大自然已经进化出了各种各样的迷人的运动机制，这些机制利用了复杂材料和流体的特性。直到最近，研究人员才能够使用数学和计算工具严格比较这些形式的运动在不同环境中的相对优势和劣势。同样，计算生理学的进步现在使研究人员能够探索分子和细胞水平上的变化如何导致有机体水平上的表现发生重大变化。研讨会的目的是强调最近的例子，说明如何将计算、数学和实验工具结合起来，最终回答有机体生物学五大挑战之一提出的一些问题：？整合生活和物理系统。研讨会的一个重点将是说明动物运动研究中建模、实验和模拟之间的协同作用。研讨会的另一个重点将是强调结合多个生物组织层次的数学模型，以了解组织物理的微小变化如何导致组织水平性能的巨大变化。研讨会的目的是促进对学生的有效培训和在生物学，数学，理论和模拟的明确跨学科背景下工作的初级教师的专业发展的讨论。

The goal of the symposium and associated workshop at the 2012 Meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology is to encourage investigators in organismal biology to use recent computational advances in fluid-structure interaction problems, stochastic modeling, and complex fluids and materials to answer fundamental questions in ecomechanics, functional morphology, and comparative physiology. A goal of this meeting is to attract junior investigators to these types of problems, and this is particularly timely given the new NSF postdoctoral fellowship on the ?Intersections of Biology and Mathematical and Physical Sciences.?Recent advances in computational methods have made realistic large-scale simulations of animal locomotion possible. This has resulted in numerous mathematical and computational studies of locomotion with the purpose of improving the design of micro-air and underwater vehicles, motivating the development of improved numerical methods, and enhancing our understanding of stability and maneuverability. How such mathematical studies can improve our understanding of organisms in the context of their environment and physiology remains relatively unexplored. For example, nature has evolved a wide variety of fascinating mechanisms of locomotion that exploit the properties of complex materials and fluids. Only recently have researchers been able to use mathematical and computational tools to rigorously compare the relative advantages and disadvantages of these forms of locomotion in different environments. Similarly, advances in computational physiology now allow investigators to explore how changes at the molecular and cellular levels could lead to significant changes in performance at the level of the organism. The intent of the symposium will be to highlight recent examples of how computational, mathematical, and experimental tools can be combined to ultimately answer some of questions posed in one of the five grand challenges in organismal biology: ?Integrating living and physical systems.? One emphasis of the symposium will be to illustrate the synergy between modeling, experiments, and simulation in studies of animal locomotion. Another emphasis of the symposium will be to highlight mathematical models that combine multiple levels of biological organization to understand how small changes in tissue physics can result in large changes in performance at the organismal level. The purpose of the workshop is to facilitate discussions about effective training of students and the professional development of junior faculty who are working in an explicitly interdisciplinary context of biology, mathematics, theory, and simulation.