Multiple Paths to Multiple Life

A longstanding challenge in building theories of life has been to separate material properties, more general constraints, and universal principles. We aim to bring together diverse researchers to further disentangle these three categories and to further elucidate the latter two categories. More specifically we are interested in addressing the following questions:

● How different could the material properties of life conceivably be across diverse origins of life?

● What systematic laws of extant life have yet to be discovered and are these connected to constraints that are likely to be constant across the universe?

● What universal principles do we lack for making true progress in building and identifying novel or unknown life?

Addressing these questions requires bringing together theorists and experimentalists with expertise in theoretical computer science, statistical physics, synthetic biology, network theory, comparative biology, and intelligence.

This event is supported by the National Science Foundation Grant Number 1745355, under the Research Coordination Networks (RCN) program (RoL: RCN for Exploration of Life’s Origins).  Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.