The submission deadline for abstract proposals is extended by two weeks!

New deadline: 05/04/2025

Join us in Siena, Italy, September 1-5.

More at: ccs25.cssociety.org

The re-emergence of Machine Learning (ML) in the last decade has started to revolutionize the way we think about science, technology, and even our everyday lives. ML has rapidly become a significant part of research across all scientific areas, including the physical sciences. This school attempts to capture the recent excitement about ML in general and for biophysical and biomolecular systems in particular, addressing participants with various backgrounds ranging from biology or biotechnology to physics.

The school’s purpose is threefold: a) to provide a theoretical foundation from the physicists’ perspective, b) to cross-pollinate different theoretical, experimental, and computational approaches, and c) to develop an overarching perspective that would tie together the various phenomena from biomolecular simulation and electrostatic interactions on the molecular scale to collective behavior of macroscopic biological entities in a unified approach within an ML framework.

There is no registration fee and limited funds are available for travel and local expenses.

This school will be preceded by the II Brazilian Workshop on Soft Matter from April 7-11.

More at: www.ictp-saifr.org

Through minicourses and research seminars and discussion sessions, this school and workshop will explore the fundamental physical principles that govern living systems across scales, from macromolecules to birds. Minicourse topics during the school will include:

Molecular and Cell Biophysics
Neurophysics
Dynamical Systems and Collective Motion
Machine Learning Tools for Biological Physics
The school is designed for graduate students interested in the intersection of physics and life sciences from a physics perspective. Leading experts will deliver in-depth lectures on cutting-edge experiments, theoretical frameworks, and emerging trends in the field.

Immediately following the school there will be a 3-day workshop with invited seminars by researchers from Latin America, as well as discussion sessions addressing how to build a network of biological physicists in the region.

Applicants are invited to submit abstracts for poster presentations during both the school and workshop.

There is no registration fee. Limited funding is available to support travel and local expenses for school participants and local expenses for workshop participants.

More at: www.ictp-saifr.org

October 28 – November 1, 2024

São Paulo, Brazil

ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP

We will present five 3-hour lectures that will introduce participants to the world of Bayesian Machine Learning for scientific purposes. The minicourse is tailored to suit both senior and junior researchers, catering to their respective levels of experience and interest.

In the first block of each lecture, we aim to transmit the big picture of the lecture’s topic with a focus on the details from a supervising point of view. The fine points and subtleties will be addressed here, but without strict demonstrations or supplied code. This block is intended for both seniors and juniors: for seniors as a summary that shows how to apply these tools to scientific research; and for juniors as an entrance to the second block in which we put our hands in the dough. We conclude the block with an extended coffee break where we expect that the proposed ideas trigger discussions around each participant’s field of study and how to apply it in their data.

The second block is very hands-on and is intended for juniors, but seniors interested in getting actively involved in the calculations are welcome as well. We present, discuss and write code. Participants are engaged in coding exercises and discussing practical applications. This block emphasizes practical skills and real-world problem-solving. We use different libraries, and we deploy statistical software especially designed to tackle the presented problems

The minicourse is generally designed for any scientific career. We use mostly physics examples, but the material will be useful and insightful for any other field with hard scientific research. We will try to adapt and discuss the problems within the participants’ fields of research.

Participants are expected to have taken courses in algebra and analysis, be familiar with multi-dimensional vectors and expressions, have some knowledge of probability and statistics, and be prepared for non-trivial abstract reasoning and thinking. Juniors, in addition, are expected to have some knowledge of Python.

There is no registration fee and limited funds are available for local expenses.

Lecturer:

Ezequiel Alvarez (ICAS-UNSAM, Argentina)
Organizer:

Rogério Rosenfeld (IFT-UNESP/ICTP-SAIFR, Brazil)

Apply  at: www.ictp-saifr.org

Disorder plays a central role in the theoretical description of a rich variety of systems spanning several disciplines — soft and hard condensed matter, biology, information science and engineering. Today, there is a surplus of enthusiastic and capable students with a diverse background who are eager to receive systematic training on powerful theoretical methods and exciting recent developments in the field. One of the goals of our school is to reach a broad audience that includes students interested in complexity or bio-inspired applications, as well as information science and quantum materials. Our school will establish a common forum where theories of general interest can be learned and discussed, catalyze the nucleation of new research lines in São Paulo and Brazil, and expose students to a full breadth of intellectual opportunity in the field of disordered systems.

As a São Paulo School of Advanced Science, funds are available for travel and local expenses of Master’s and PhD students from not only South America but also from other continents.

Read the full article at: www.ictp-saifr.org

School on Origins is an interdisciplinary school that tackles the foundational questions concerning the origins of biophysical systems which include but are not limited to : molecular, cellular, neural and behavioral systems. We aim to find principles shared across systems using tools from statistical physics, mathematical analysis and numerical simulations to explore these questions. We have invited researchers that work both on the experimental and theoretical side to cover a variety of biophysical systems and theoretical approaches. The school is aimed at graduate students either at the master’s or PhD level who have a strong quantitative background and a keen interest to pursue interdisciplinary research.

We invite students pursuing degrees in physics, computer science, engineering, or mathematics. Those pursuing degrees in biology need to provide evidence of strong and extensive quantitative background in topics such as calculus, dynamical systems and numerical programming.

There is no registration fee and limited funds are available for travel and local expenses.

More at: www.ictp-saifr.org

Systems as different as the cellular cytoskeleton, microbial communities in soil, and savanna landscapes have in common the emergence of patterns: random yet organized spatial structures that form in an otherwise translationally invariant space. These structures emerge due to the local, individual-level interactions of agents – proteins, cells, trees – that, on a larger scale, result in nonlinear dynamics for the density field. Crucial phenomena hinge on the formation of these patterns: mitosis, embryo development, bacterial population survival, ecosystem’s robustness to aridification.

While broadly different in scale, these systems can be theoretically described by similar statistical physics frameworks, an approach pioneered by Alan Turing in 1952 and still the focus of very active development. The goal of this school is to bring together experts on these different systems using mathematical modeling, experimental approaches and modern data-driven techniques to engage in an interdisciplinary dialogue about pattern formation in living systems.

There is no registration fee and limited funds are available for travel and local expenses.

More at: www.ictp-saifr.org

See Also: 3rd ICTP-SAIFR Symposium on Current Topics in Molecular Biophysics (CTMB3): October 7 – 9, 2024

​"Guided Self-Organization: Machine Learning in Embodied Agents"
The 11th International Conference on Guided Self-Organization takes place during 12-14 February 2025 in Tübingen, Germany. GSO-2025 is organized by The University of Tübingen, The Hamburg University of Technology, The Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, and The International Association for Guided Self-Organization (TIA-GSO).
Research Aims and Topics
The goal of Guided Self-Organization (GSO) is to leverage the strengths of self-organization (simplicity, parallelization, adaptability, robustness, scalability) while still being able to direct the outcome of the self-organizing process. GSO typically has the following features: (i) an increase in organization (structure and/or functionality) over some time; (ii) the local interactions are not explicitly guided by any external agent; (iii) task-independent objectives are combined with task-dependent constraints.

GSO "aims to regulate self-organization for specific purposes, so that a dynamical system may reach specific attractors or outcomes. The regulation constrains a self-organizing process within a complex system by restricting local interactions between the system components, rather than following an explicit control mechanism or a global design blueprint." Information theory, nonlinear dynamics and network theory are core to many of these methods, and quantifying complexity, its sources and effects is a common theme.
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The GSO-2025 conference will bring together invited experts and researchers in machine learning, artificial life, self-organizing systems, and complex adaptive systems, with particular emphasis on autonomous agents, information theory, critical phenomena and emergent behaviour. Special topics of interest include: reinforcement learning, intrinsic motivations, origin of life, systems biology, physics of life, unconventional computation, swarm intelligence, measures of complexity, criticality, complex networks, information-driven self-organization (IDSO), etc.

The program includes three days, with five keynote talks, and a number of regular onsite presentations on each day. There are no registration fees for the conference.

More at: www.guided-self.org