Programming with Chemical Reaction Networks: Mathematical Foundations (14w5167)

The Banff International Research Station will host the "Programming with Chemical Reaction Networks: Mathematical Foundations (HALF)" workshop from June 8th to June 13th, 2014.

The information revolution that has dramatically shaped our lives had its beginnings a century or more ago, in the mathematics of Boolean logic and computability theory. While the physical realization of today's computer programs is in silicon hardware, scientists are envisioning radically new ways of programming. They envision that computer scientists of the future will write programs that are realized in bio-molecules such as DNA - programs that run in an energy-efficient manner at staggeringly small scales, in test tubes or other "wet" environments such as cells.


The purpose of this workshop, which will bring together mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists and chemists, is to advance the mathematical foundations of molecular programming. The focus of the workshop will be on understanding the capabilities of programs that can be described abstractly as chemical reactions. What could such programs do? How energy efficient can they be? How would we verify that such programs are correct?

The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) is a collaborative Canada-US-Mexico venture that provides an environment for creative interaction as well as the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and methods within the Mathematical Sciences, with related disciplines and with industry. The research station is located at The Banff Centre in Alberta and is supported by Canada's Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Alberta's Advanced Education and Technology, and Mexico's Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT).