Physics of living systems: networks, information processing, behavior
The interface between physics and biology is expanding rapidly, driven by progress in measurement methods (related to nanotechnologies, microfluidics, single molecule manipulations, optical imaging methods, massive sequencing, ...). These advances both enhance our fundamental understanding of living processes, and make possible new biomedical or bioengineering applications.
The scope of the course is two-fold:
- introduce concepts and quantitative methods, borrowed from statistical physics, information theory and machine learning to analyze, model, and study biological systems, with an emphasis on collective effects supporting biological functions and computations;
- apply these methods to real systems coming from all fields of biology, in particular neuroscience, immunology, genomics, molecular biology, evolutionary biology, etc. In practice, students will be given measurements data and will process them, by writing Python codes, and discuss the results. The emphasis will be put on methods, not on programming.
Requirements: basic level in statistical physics, elementary knowledge of biology.
- Teaching coordinator: Monasson Rémi