Synthetic Biology ​Workshop at Unconventional Computation and Natural Computation Conference

Synthetic Biology (the engineering of biology) is the application of the engineering principles to biology in order to build synthetic biological systems. This is a new and fascinating interdisciplinary field (born in 2000 in MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab), where engineers, physicists, and computer scientists have a new opportunity to apply their engineering concepts and tools: Biology is the new hardware that can be programmed.
 In this workshop we are interested in studying:

1. Biological information processing: how cells communicate, process biological signals and take decisions?  
2. Synthetic Biology and DNA Computing confluence: how to engineer and program new biological systems (based on DNA, RNA or proteins) that can interact with cell and/or can sense and respond to biological signals?  How can we design new DNA Computing devices able to operate in vivo?
3. Artificial Intelligence in vivo: How to use algorithmic ideas developed in Artificial Intelligence field to program smart cellular computers? Or, how to apply evolutionary computing ideas in the design of new biocircuits?
4. Heterotic living computing: Most biocircuits developed so far are based on Boolean algebra and use a digital/binary abstraction to operate with biological signals. How could we design new robust analog, and/or reversible, and/or probabilistic and/or multicellular biocircuits?

This workshop is an interdisciplinary meeting that will bring together researchers from various domains with interests in synthetic biology, programmable biology, DNA computing, natural computing and any other in vivo cellular computing paradigm. We want to join engineers and computer scientists with biologists to foster collaboration, and to imagine new ways of programming cells.  

Important Dates:

• Submission deadline: 29 April 2016
• Notification of acceptance: May 2016
• Final versions due:  end of May 2016
• Workshop: July 15, 2016

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Submission

We invite the submission of long papers (12 pages maximum), or extended abstracts (3 pages maximum) to the workshop EasyChair site.
 
Papers must be submitted in Portable Document Format (PDF); the revised version of manuscripts must be prepared in LaTeX, using the Springer LNCS style.
 
Papers must not be under simultaneous consideration by any other conference with published proceedings. All accepted papers must be presented at the workshop. 

Papers arising from the workshop will be published in a special issue of the International Journal of Unconventional Computing.

Contact

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
 
Alfonso Rodríguez-Patón (email: arpaton@fi.upm.es)
Ángel Goñi Moreno (email: agoni@cnb.csic.es)