We need your help to ‘hack’ the Rules of Life – to deepen our understanding and consider how those Rules might be used to tackle pressing societal challenges.
In 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) unveiled a set of ‘Big Ideas,’ 10 bold, long-term research and process ideas that identified unique opportunities to position our Nation at the cutting edge of global science and engineering by bringing together diverse disciplinary perspectives to support convergence research. One of those, Understanding the Rules of Life, is based on developing a predictive understanding of how key properties of living systems emerge from interactions among factors such as genomes, phenotypes, and dynamic environments. Funded projects over the past five years have investigated these interactions at multiple levels, in various organisms, and at different scales to produce generalizable ‘rules’ capable of predicting change in living systems.
Now, we are ready to take a next step and consider how to use those ‘rules’ to advance solutions to society’s toughest challenges. And we need your participation and help.
We invite you to participate in a series of free Virtual Events centered on Using the Rules of Life to Address Societal Challenges. The goal is to bring together researchers with diverse perspectives – including those from all scientific disciplines, with various levels of experience (from senior scientists to postdocs), from different types of institutions or organizations, and from groups historically underrepresented in STEM – to share ideas about how Rules of Life approaches and data might be harnessed by multidisciplinary teams to tackle pressing societal challenges.
How you can get engaged:
Virtual Town Hall (open to all)
March 15, 2022
To discuss Rules of Life concepts and to identify challenges that are best addressed by applying Rules of Life approaches
Workshops 1-4 (by invitation)
April 14, 19, 21, and 26, 2022
Each focused on a specific challenge identified in the Town Hall
To explore ideas on how multidisciplinary research inspired by using Rules of Life can help provide solutions to societal challenges
Postdoc ‘incubators’ (by invitation, specifically for postdoctoral researchers)
April 12, April 22, May 2, May 17, 2022
To help maximize the workshop experience through professional networking and writing
Registration open through February 28, 2022.
DEBrief 