Giersch School & International Conference

(English conference)

What do the human brain, biological networks, developing organisms, the immune system, flocking birds, AI systems and quantum devices have in common?
All these systems, while vastly different in their appearances, spatial and temporal scales and functions, unfold their dynamics in high-dimensional state spaces. At the same time, external stimuli can condense these complex spaces onto a dramatically smaller subset of states that represent targeted responses to these inputs. Most intriguingly, this subspace may emerge from low-order, often linear interactions and superpositions, which appear to balance the potential of generating arbitrary solutions against processes that filter out apt solutions from all physically possible ones. Ultimately, this enables the emergence of new and meaningful system states seemingly out of nothing.
Is this the basis of knowledge, cognition, and information processing in general? And if so, can we identify common principles and relevant differences by comparing such systems across different realms and disciplines? This conference will bring together experts from neuroscience, molecular and developmental biology, simulation and machine learning, and quantum computing and sensing. It will explore fundamental commonalities across systems from these distinct fields, at the same time highlighting their peculiarities, and how material and temporal constraints may have shaped them.

06.-10.11.2023

For further information and registration, please visit our Indico site.