17th EMBL International PhD Symposium

The 17th European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) International PhD Symposium, titled “Just by Chance? – Randomness and Variability Shaping Biology”, will explore the importance of randomness and variability in biology, and how living systems navigate the fine line between order and chaos in order to survive and thrive.

Living systems must robustly maintain their internal organization, yet remain flexible to respond and adapt to the challenges of a dynamic environment. The balance between these opposing requirements shapes biological systems across all scales, from molecules to ecosystems. The investigation of this balance between optimization and variability is central to modern biological research.

The symposium will highlight the role of stochasticity in biology, touching upon topics such as the role of noise, thermal fluctuations and mutations. At the same time, it will focus on how living systems can both exploit or counteract this intrinsic unpredictability in phenomena such as symmetry breaking, evolutionary adaptation or the establishment of robust error correction systems and feedback controls.

The 17th EMBL PhD symposium will take place on October 22nd-24th 2015, at EMBL Heidelberg, Germany. The registration has opened, and until the 5th of July you can get a special early-bird discount! You can register according to the guidelines on http://phdsymposium.embl.org/