ICTS

The International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS) and the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), are organizing a Winter School on Quantitative Systems Biology from 8 to 19 December 2015 (QSB2015), as part of the ICTP- ICTS Programme in Biology. This is the fourth school in the series on Quantitative Systems Biology, held alternately at Trieste and Bangalore. QSB2015 will be hosted in the ICTS campus in Bangalore.

The School is targeted towards young researchers, particularly those at the PhD and post -doctoral level with backgrounds in the physical and mathematical sciences and engineering, who are working in biology or hope to do so. It will give participants a broad introduction to open problems in modern biology, and provide pedagogical instruction on new quantitative approaches being used to address those problems. The main school will be preceded by an intensive three-day pre-school (5-7 December, 2015) targeted to non-biologists.

QSB2015 is centered around bacteria, the simplest known forms of life. The focus is on the basics of cellular life and the principles thereof. The emphasis is on the structures and processes that allow bacteria to survive, reproduce, evolve and form communities in their environment. This is a setting that is fertile for quantitative work, both theoretical and experimental, and for grasping some universals in biology. Lecture courses on different topics are envisaged for the school by an array of distinguished lecturers. The courses will provide an intensive background to the specific topics before turning towards cutting edge research.

Subjects include

• Bacterial cell physiology and growth
• Metabolism, regulation and response to the environment
• Structure and dynamics of biochemical networks
• Bacterial ecology
• Evolution
• Energy, information and computation in cells

PARTICIPATION

Applications to this school are now closed.
List of selected participants

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

• Antonio Celani (ICTP)
• Sanjay Jain (Delhi)
• Sandeep Krishna (NCBS)
• Vijay Krishnamurthy (ICTS)
• Pankaj Mehta (Boston)
• Matthew Scott (Waterloo)

SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY COMMITTEE

• Vijay Balasubramanian (UPenn)
• Nagasuma Chandra (IISc)
• Matteo Marsili (ICTP)
• Anirvan Sengupta (Rutgers)
• Mukund Thattai (NCBS)
• Michele Vendruscolo (Cambridge)

SPEAKERS

LECTURE COURSES:

• Mathias Heinemann (Groningen)
• Suckjoon Jun (UCSD)
• Tom Kuhlman (UIUC)
• Pankaj Mehta (Boston)
• Yitzhak Pilpel (Weizmann)
• Nathan Price (ISB Seattle)
• Matthew Scott (Waterloo)
• Gary Stormo (Washington)

RESEARCH TALKS:

• Nagasuma Chandra (IISc, Bangalore)
• Kunihiko Kaneko (Tokyo)
• Andreas Wagner (Zurich)

PRE-SCHOOL COURSES:

• Dec 5 & 6: Basic biology for non-biologists: physiology of cells, gene expression and  regulation, metabolism, cell-cell communication, ecology and evolution
  Instructors: Mukund Thattai (NCBS), Supreet Saini (IITB), Deepa Agashe (NCBS)
• Dec 7: Basic mathematical methods for biologists: dynamical systems, network analysis, genomic data analysis
  Instructors: Sandeep Krishna (NCBS), Nagasuma Chandra (IISc)