COST Chemobrionics Workshop at ALIFE 2021

The European COST Action Chemobrionics aims to link research groups to stimulate new, innovative and high-impact interdisciplinary scientific research on chemobrionics. It focuses on self-organizing precipitation processes, such as chemical gardens forming biomimetic micro- and nano-tubular forms. The main theme of the “Chemobrionics” workshop at the virtual conference on artificial life ALIFE 2021 will be to explore, quantify and understand non-equilibrium chemical systems, namely in the context of origin of life and artificial life.

The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers interested in chemobrionics and wet artificial life, namely chemists, physicists, biologists, engineers. Further, it is expected that computer scientists performing mathematical simulations of life-like phenomena in chemical systems and experts from robotic field that build the platforms for laboratory experiments automatization will participate as well.

Topics

• Wet artificial life
• Origin of life
• Protocells
• Chemobrionics
• Messy chemistry
• Chemical garden
• Complex system
• Nonlinear physics
• Self-organization

Agenda 

10:00 – 10:10

Introduction (Julyan Cartwright – COST Action Chemobrionics chair)

10:10 – 10:30

Precipitation of Biomorph Fibers on Micropatterned SU-8 Posts (Pamela Knoll – invited speaker)

10:30 – 10:40

A Neural Network Framework for the Generative Modelling of Chemical Gardens (Thomas Chen)

10:40 – 10:50

Self-organization of biomimetic photo autotrophic protocell-like assemblies ‘Jeewanu’ in a laboratory simulated possible prebiotic atmosphere (Vinod Kumar Gupta)

10:50 – 11:00

Controlled formation of chemical gardens and the fabrication of chemobrionic materials (Erik Hughes)

11:00 – 11:10

Surface instabilities of tubular chitosan hydrogel (Pawan Kumar)

11:10 – 11:20

Reaction media for construction of a Belousov- Zhabotinsky chemical computer (František Muzika)

11:20 – 11:30

Interpreting communicating artificial cells by the MacKay theory of semantic information: a viable path? (Pasquale Stano)

11:30 – 11:40

Carbon-carrageenan ionic blends for application in soft robotics (Janno Torop)

11:40 – 11:50

Organic-to-inorganic transition of chemical gardens (Réka Zahorán)

11:50 – 12:00

CuS-Carrageenan nanocomposite Grown from the Interface of Gel/Liquid (Morad Zouheir)

Dowload the AGENDA & BOOK OF ABSTRACTS

Organisers

• Jitka Čejková, University of Chemistry and Technology Prague, Czech Republic,  email: cejkovaj@vscht.cz
• Geoff Cooper, School of Chemistry, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK,  email: Geoff.Cooper@glasgow.ac.uk
• Erik Hughes, University of Birmingham, UK, email: E.A.B.Hughes@bham.ac.uk
• Tan Phat Huynh, Åbo Akademi University, Finland, email: tan.huynh@abo.fi

Submissions are welcome as far as the submitted content is relevant to the topic of the workshop.  Contributions may be original or already published.

Submit your abstract to chemobrionics@gmail.com

Important dates:

• Abstract submission closing: 31 May, 2021
• Notification: 20 June, 2021
• Workshop day: 19 July, 2021

The abstracts of accepted contributions will be made available on this workshop website.

Registration

If you are interested to join just this Chemobrionics workshop, please fill the registration form here or contact us at chemobrionics@gmail.com.

This workshop is a staellite event of the conference on artificial life, to register for the full conference, please check the registration istructions at  ALIFE 2021 conference web page.

COST Action Chemobrionics participants: ITC Conference Grants provide support for conference participation of PhD students and ECI researchers from participating Inclusiveness Target Countries (ITC) - for more details how to apply for financial support to cover the full ALIFE 2021 conference fee see Grant page or contact us (chemobrionics@gmail.com).

Images source:

https://www.stephanequerbes.com/portfolio/science/

(with courtesy of Stéphane QUERBES)