Agenda

12-13 September, 2022
ECLT Project Group Meeting
[on invitation]

On September 12-13, 2022 the European Centre for Living Technology (ECLT), will host an exploratory/program development workshop supported by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW).

The goal is both to identify common research interests and to assemble core teams to go after EC and other potential funding. 

• One focus area is to create and explore living and life-like materials. This includes the study and development of functional materials/systems, charge transfer/simple metabolisms, self-replicating systems, motility, as well as foundational/computational principles of self-assembly, self-organization, information dynamics, evolution, minimal living processes as well as AI based (e.g., DoE and robotics) approaches to address challenges/possibilities for assembling bottom-up protocells/artificial cells. 
• Another focus is on the dynamics of systems of systems for generalized health.
  Biological, economical, social and to some extent, complex technological systems differ from engineered artifacts in various respects: first, they are not designed but evolved.  Health is a more elusive term than purpose. In classical medicine, one may define a healthy organ as one that performs specific purposes efficiently. The situation is more complicated if one regards larger systems. For example, the stability of a system is an essential aspect of its well–functioning. However, biological and social systems should also be adaptable and even allow open-ended evolution (e.g., innovation in an economy). Further aspects are standardization, modularity and hierarchization. Evolution does not generally lead to standardized solutions or modularity, which may emerge but less pronounced than in technology. A direct consequence of this fact in medicine is that e.g. polymorbidity makes therapy planning difficult, and seemingly small changes in one subsystem can lead to decompensation with fatal consequences. In ecology, the breakdown of food webs can be understood as an analogue to decompensation in medicine.