Information theory and computational complexity have emerged as central concepts in the study of biological and physical systems, in both the classical and quantum realm. The low-energy landscape of classical and quantum systems can be characterized in terms of constraint satisfaction problems, with the physical behavior of these theories – for example, glassy behavior – governed by the computational complexity of such problems. Information theory also provides a language for laying the foundations of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, and plays a central role in understanding the emergence of a small number of useful parameters in models of physical and biological phenomena.
This school, organized jointly by the ICTS and Brandeis University, will cover a variety of forefront research topics in physics and biology, in which information and computation play a central role:
• Thermodynamics of information processing
• Coding and computation in statistical mechanics
• Quantum information in extended systems
• Information geometry and ”sloppy” models
Inspired by the history of the renormalization group, the goal is to provide an interdisciplinary survey of the uses of information theory in physics and biology, in order to seed future conceptual breakthroughs in our understanding of complex physical and biological systems. The school will consist of a set of pedagogical lectures by prominent researchers in statistical physics, biological physics, and quantum information theory. These will be supplemented with tutorials led by the organizers and structured around worked problems and selected readings of key papers. The pedagogical activities will be followed up with seminars by the lecturers on current research.
The school is intended for advanced graduate students, post-docs and other junior researchers
Deadline for submitting applications: 14 October 2016
Deadline for submitting applications (extended): 31 October 2016
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