Physical Biology Circle Meeting

The Circle Meeting is an annual series of symposia bringing together researchers from leading European research institutes, including among others the EMBL in Heidelberg, the Institut Curie in Paris, the AMOLF in Amsterdam, the University of Saarbrücken, the Francis Crick Institute in London, the IST Austria in Vienna, the IBEC in Barcelona and the MPI-PKS. The scientific focus of the Circle Meeting is broadly on theoretical and experimental biophysics, including tissue mechanics, molecular biophysics and stochasticity in biological systems.

The meeting took place in a hybrid format with 55 participants from various European institutions attending on site and 78 participants joining online via Zoom and gather.town. As keynote speakers we invited Nathalie Balaban from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem who gave a virtual talk about self-replicating biological matter and Anne Grapin-Botton from the MPI-CBG who joined in person and spoke about self-organisation in organoids.

All remaining slots were reserved for researchers on the graduate student and postdoc level. They gave shorter talks of 20 minutes length, which were followed by lively discussions among on site and online participants. In addition to these regular talks we had a poster session in gather.town, which was preceded by a flash talk session with brief presentations of poster presenters.

The Physical Biology Circle Meeting for the first time since the Covid pandemic facilitated scientific interactions for most of the participants which might eventually lead to future collaborations.