Bertinoro International Summer School of Natural Computation - BNC 2008

  University Residential Center  -  Bertinoro (Forlì-Cesena), Italy
                     September 20-27, 2008
                 http://www.dmi.unict.it/~bnc/

The International Summer School of Natural Computing is devoted to
disseminate the various branches of Natural Computing. The school will
gather leading specialists from several horizons lecturing and
discussing on the achievements and perspectives both fundamental and
applied, non excluding junior scientists and PhD students.

List of topics:
Self-Organizing Systems; DNA, BioMolecular and Chemistry Computing;
Artificial Immune Systems; Metabolic Systems and Artificial
Biochemistry; Bio-Inspired Robotics; Rule-Based Modeling of
Biochemical Systems; Synthetic Biology for Natural Computing vs.
Synthetic Biology for Bioengineering.

The school is interdisciplinary in nature, and can be seen both as a
School for advanced students, and as a Workshop for researchers.
Leading world-renowned researchers in various research areas of
Natural Computing will hold tutorials on their subject area, while new
ideas will be presented in poster sessions, discussions and short
seminars.
The school is structured in lectures in the morning and poster/seminar
sessions and informal discussion in the afternoon.

Students in different area of computer science, natural sciences and
mathematics are particularly encouraged to apply. Accepted students
may submit a poster and/or a seminar to present their recent research
activities.

The main goal of this International school is to develop the mutual
interaction between specialists from natural computing scientists and
biologists.
For the students, the prime objective is to learn state-of-art
methodologies, algorithms and problems in Natural Computing.

The School is supported by
BiCi with its Leonardo Melandri Program,
University of Cambridge and
University of Catania.


Speakers

"Modeling aging within bacterial populationu sing a probabilistic
p-calculus", Bruno Apolloni, University of Milan, Italy

"Biological-inspired Robotics", Paolo Arena, University of Catania, Italy

"Genetic networks underlying neural stem cell behaviour", Andrea
Brand, University of Cambridge, UK

"Molecules as Automata", Luca Cardelli, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK

"Nature-Inspired Approach applied to Game Theory", Vincenzo Cutello,
University of Catania, Italy

"Formal Methods, Concurrency and Rule-based Modeling in System Biology
(part 4/4)", Troels Damgaard, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

"Formal Methods, Concurrency and Rule-based Modeling in System Biology
(part 2/4)", Vincent Danos, CNRS, Universite Denis Diderot, France

"Executable Models for Synaptic Plasticity", Pierpaolo Degano,
University of Pisa, Italy.

"Formal Methods, Concurrency and Rule-based Modeling in System Biology
(part 1/4)", Walter Fontana, Harvard University, USA

"Perspectives in synthetic Biology", Jim Haseloff, University of Cambridge, UK

"Formal Methods, Concurrency and Rule-based Modeling in System Biology:
Simulation and Causality in rule based modeling of bio molecular
pathways (part 3/4)", Jean Krivine, Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau
Cedex, France

"Systems Biology: Combining Formal and Statistical Approaches", Pietro
Liò, University of Cambridge, UK

"Mathematical Aspects of Information Storage", Lakshminarayanan
Mahadevan, Harvard University, USA

"Metabolic Systems", Vincenzo Manca, University of Verona, Italy

"Combinatorial optimization by natural processes, with a special eye
to ants", Vittorio Maniezzo, University of Bologna, Italy

"DNA Computing", Giancarlo Mauri, University of Milan Bicocca, Italy

"Optimization and Design using Nature-Inspire Computing", Giuseppe
Nicosia, University of Catania, Italy

"The BlenX programming language: a biology encoder", Corrado Priami,
Microsoft Research - University of Trento CoSBi, Italy

"Natural Computation", Grzegorz Rozenberg, Leiden University, The Netherlands

"Engineering Immunity: From Natural and Artificial Immune Systems",
Jon Timmis, York University, UK.

"Body and Cognition in Organismal Architectures:  from Organelles to
Embryo", Luca Zammataro, Cnr, Italy


Seminars
There will be several seminars complementing the topics treated in the course.

"TBA", Paolo Bellavista, University of Bologna, Italy

"TBA", Tammy Cheng, University of Cambridge, UK

"TBA", Eric Yu-En Lu, University of Cambridge, UK

"Bio-inspired and spatial abstractions for pervasive computing", Marco
Mamei, University of Modena, Italy

"A spatial model and simulator for metabolic pathways", Emanuela
Merelli, University of Camerino, Italy


Registrations Close:        July 16th, 2008 (*entended* deadline)


The registration fee for the School is 990 Euro (resp. 1190 Euro) and
includes all local expenses from the evening of Saturday September
20th to morning on Saturday September 27th including

     * all meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner),
     * on-site lodging in double-occupancy (resp. single) rooms,
     * all Courses,
     * Lecture Notes,
     * Coffee Breaks,
     * Computer rooms and Internet Connection,
     * Social Tour to Bologna, and
     * Social Tour to Ravenna.

Attendance is limited to 60 students (M.Sc students, Ph.D. students,
Post-Doc) and will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.
All applicants must complete a Registration Form by Wednesday, July 16th
2008. After this is complete, they should pay, following the
instructions, as soon as possible, and before July 30th, 2008
(Applications are considered complete only after the payment has been
received). The form is available on the official web site. Follow
instructions from the form, in order to complete the registration. You
will receive a confirmation email.

The *extended* registration deadline is:   Wednesday July 16th, 2008

Past this deadline, the Bertinoro Center will accept registrations on
a space availability basis. For any questions regarding registration,
accomodations, accompanying persons, etc. please contact Eleonora
Campori at ecampori@ceub.it.

For any question please send email to bnc@dmi.unict.it

Best Regards,
Mario Pavone - Publicity Chair