School on the Origins of Life, Behavior and Cognition

March 10-21, 2025

ICTP-SAIFR, São Paulo, Brazil

Application Deadline: December 28, 2024

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.

Organizers:

Ahmed El Hady (Center for Collective Animal Behavior, Max Planck Institute and Univ.Konstanz, Germany)
Antonio C. Roque (USP Ribeirão Preto, Brazil)
Daniel Y. Takahashi (UFRN, Brazil)

Lecturers:

Suzanne Still (University of Hawaii at Mānoa, USA)
Randall Beer (Indiana University Bloomington, USA)
Asif Ghazanfar (Princeton University, USA)
Don Katz (Brandeis University, USA)
Gandhimohan M. Viswanathan (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte – UFRN, Brazil)
Bruno Mota (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Ana Amador (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina)

All details and application procedure can be found here: https://www.ictp-saifr.org/solbc2025/ .

Please let me know if you have any questions,

All the best regards,

Ahmed El hady

Dr. Ahmed El Hady
Research Group Leader
Cluster for Advanced Study of Collective Behavior
University of Konstanz / Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
Universitätsstraße 10, 78464 Konstanz
Room ZT 907
Postbox 687

Tel.: +49 7531 88-4742