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Isolated systems tend to evolve towards thermal equilibrium, a special state that has been a research focus in physics for more than a century. By contrast, most processes studied in biological systems are far from equilibrium. A fundamental overarching hallmark of all these processes is the emergence of structure, order, and information, and we are facing the major challenge to identify the underlying physical principles. Two particular exciting problems are the self-organised formation of spatio-temporal patterns and the robust self-assembly of complex structures. In both fields there are recent advances in understanding the underlying physics that will be reviewed in this talk.

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Erwin Frey, LMU Munich
HS III
Contact: Joachim Krug