Active Materials and Self-Assembled Structures

More information about this external event can be found on the On Growth and Form website.

This workshop, closely related to D’Arcy Thompson’s legacy, will focus on recent advances, mathematical challenges, and promising new directions in research on mathematical aspects of form in living systems. Stochastic models and topological approaches, including knot theory, have been employed to study shape evolution, for example the structure of the DNA. Cellular and developmental biology have recently seen a surge in the use of mathematical models and new conceptual frameworks for problems such as the self-organisation of the cytoskeleton or gradients of morphogens in embryos. However, the constitutive features of living systems pose unique technical and conceptual challenges. Some of these challenges concern construction of a multiscale framework for agent-based models, and employing non-equilibrium physics to address non-conservative nature of living systems, using continuum models such as the (visco)elasticity of growing bodies.