Since biological shapes are related to physiological functions, biomedical analyses are poised to incorporate more morphological data. The advances in imaging techniques have enabled the access to 3D shapes present in a variety of biological structures: organs, cells, organelles, and proteins.
These will be accompanied by “solo” talks and relevant round table discussions on how physics and biology can be better integrated. The Workshop will be entail “biology-physics duets” – talks given jointly by two currently collaborating speakers, with different backgrounds. Therefore, the main goal of this Workshop is to foster integration between physics and biology across scales, approaches, and participant backgrounds. They would benefit massively from closer collaboration with the “other crowd”. They lack understanding of the theory behind tissue mechanics and the engineering skills to investigate them. On the other side, the cell biologists/developmental biologists/cancer biologists lack contact with the physicists, modellers and material scientists, and are unable to connect their biology to the relevant physical principles and available methodology. However, the biological questions addressed may have limited physiological relevance and lack careful consideration of the burning questions in biology. On one hand, there are vast advances being made in generating tuneable materials, versatile biomimetic polymers and artificial 3D scaffolds, and these are linked to advanced modelling and understanding of the physical parameters of these systems. The interests are shared but the communication between the two crowds is limited by the lack of a common language. Currently, there exists somewhat of a void between the biologists and the physicists working on these topics. With the increased appreciation that physical forces are key regulators of all biological processes, new emerging scientific communities are forming around topics such as physical forces in cancer and mechanobiology in different biological processes ranging from development to homeostasis.
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