This workshop, closely related to D’Arcy Thompson’s legacy, focused on recent advances, mathematical challenges, and promising new directions in research on mathematical aspects of form in living systems. Stochastic models and topological approaches, including knot theory, have been employed to study shape evolution, for example DNA. Cellular and developmental biology have seen a surge in the use of mathematical models and new conceptual frameworks for problems such as the self-organisation of the cytoskeleton or gradients of morphogens in embryos. However, the constitutive features of living systems pose unique technical and conceptual challenges. Some of these challenges concern construction of a multiscale framework for agent-based models, and employing non-equilibrium physics to address non-conservative nature of living systems, using continuum models such as the (visco)elasticity of growing bodies.
This workshop was a satellite workshop of the Growth Form and Self-Organisation programme. This workshop was preceded by an interdisciplinary conference celebrating the centenary of On Growth and Form.
