Hanna Koko (Institute of Organismic and Molecular Evolution,
University of Mainz (DE))

Francis Corson (Laboratoire de Physique de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris (FR))

Francis Corson is a CNRS research director at the physics department of Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. Following a PhD at ENS and a postdoc at the Rockefeller University, he has held CNRS positions at the Pasteur Institute then at ENS. Drawing on his background in nonlinear physics, and on close collaborations with experimentalists, his research aims to develop simple models to illuminate the dynamics of developmental patterning and morphogenesis, with a particular interest for self-organization, explored in such systems as the Drosophila peripheral nervous system and the early amniote embryo.

Oliver Meacock (University of Sheffield (UK))

Oliver works at the interface between microbial ecology and physics, including use of bacteria as an experimental model of active matter and development of theory to understand the properties of microbiomes. His main interest at present is understanding how niche-based interaction mechanisms (e.g. cross feeding of metabolites or nutrient competition) shapes emergent community structure in microbial communities.

Gasper Tkacik (Institute of Science and Technology Austria (AT))

Gasper Tkacik is a Professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria. Gasper obtained his PhD in Physics from Princeton University for his work with William Bialek. His  postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania focused on Computational Neuroscience. Gasper is interested in how interacting systems in biology – networks of genes, signaling proteins or neurons, and even whole organisms engaging in collective behaviors – sense, transduce and process internal and environmental signals in order to guide their behavior. On the search for basic principles underlying such “biological computation,” Gasper’s research group uses interdisciplinary approaches grounded in physics, neuroscience, inference, and data analysis. Gasper’s work has been recognized by HFSP and ERC Synergy grants, and the Lieben Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Mor Nitzan (Hebrew University Jerusalem (IL))

Mor Nitzan is an Associate Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with joint affiliations at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, Racah Institute of Physics, and The Faculty of Medicine. Previously, she was a John Harvard Distinguished Science Fellow and James S. McDonnell Fellow at Harvard University. She obtained a BSc in Physics, and a PhD in Physics and Computational Biology at the Hebrew University as an Azrieli Sciences Fellow. She is the recipient of the EMBO Young Investigator Award, Krill Award, Azrieli Early Career Faculty Fellowship, Alon Fellowship, Google Research Scholar Award, Samson Researcher Recruitment Award, and an ERC Starting Grant. Prof. Nitzan's research is at the interface of Computer Science, Physics, and Biology, focusing on the representation, inference, and design of multicellular systems. Her group develops computational frameworks to better understand how cells encode multiple layers of spatial and temporal information, and how to efficiently decode that information from single-cell and spatial omics data. They aim to uncover organization principles underlying information processing, computation, division of labor, and self-organization of multicellular structures such as tissues, and how cell-to-cell interactions can be manipulated to optimize tissue structure and function.