Collective Dynamics
of Living Systems

From cytoskeletal filaments to fish schools, living matter routinely produces coordinated, adaptive behavior without central control. This workshop brings together physicists, biologists, ecologists, and neuroscientists who study how local interactions between many simple units — cells, organisms, neurons — give rise to robust collective phenomena at the scale above them.

Over three days of talks, posters, and open discussion sessions, we'll ask what unifying principles, if any, connect a slime mold solving a maze, a starling murmuration evading a hawk, and a cortical network encoding a decision.