Frontiers in Soft and Biological Matter: Mathematical Modeling and Experiment

Physics of soft and biological matter, including the so-called active matter has been established as  a  novel  interdisciplinary  research  field  over  the  last  few  decades.  Soft  matter  typically includes  easily  deformable  objects  such  as  colloids,  polymers,  polyelectrolytes,  elastomers, micellar and vesicular systems, liquid crystals, and active matter (systems consuming stored energy or energy from the environment and transducing it into mechanical motion). Most soft matter  phenomena  are  driven  by  complex  anisotropic  molecular  interactions,  with  most interesting  effect  emerging  in  out-of-equilibrium.  Resent  years  demonstrated  a  dramatic increase  of  interest  and  understanding  of  this  out-of-equilibrium  behavior.  Physics  of  these systems  is  especially  rich,  as  illustrated,  for  example,  by  the  Toner-Tu  [1]  model  that generalizes  the  classic  Navier-Stokes  equations  via  incorporation  of  “active  mechanisms”. Description of underlying mechanisms requires sophisticated mathematical modeling and state-of-the-art  experiments,  in  which  successful  research  advances  are  possible  only  through combination of knowledge in various fields, ranging from mathematics and physics to chemistry and biology. The interdisciplinary character of this research field is reflected by the appearance of  numerous  experimental  realization  of  active  matter,  such  as  dispersions  of  microtubules driven by molecular motors [2], assemblies of epithelia cells [3], and living liquid crystals [4]. The main  goal  of  the  meeting  would  be  to  present  and  discuss  the  key  mechanisms  controlling behavior of soft and biologically relevant systems in and out of equilibrium. The program will span a number of key interdisciplinary themes, as detailed below.

1. Active matter with orientational order
2. Active LC colloids
3. Mixed-dimesnional liquid crystal colloids
4. Active gel physics
5. Fractional PDE and anomalous diffusion in porous media
6. Sloshing and mixing in bioreactors
7. p-adic analysis for protein folding
8. Symmetry methods in studies of biological processes

The  meeting  will  bring  together  specialists  in  different  fields  such  as  theoretical  and experimental  physics,  mathematical  modelling,  and  biophysics  who  will  be  united  by  the common subjects of research in soft and biological matter. The focus of the conference will be on  synergy of  experiments  and  state-o-the-art mathematical modeling with  the  emphasis  on partial and fractional differential equations, variational and symmetry methods.