Biology by the numbers on the Hawaiian Islands.

Abstract

One could imagine it might be hard to focus on science at a beautiful location such as the famous Waikiki Beach on Oahu Island, Hawaii. Amazingly, however, that's just what more than 330 participants did at the First Annual Winter Q-Bio Meeting at the Hilton Hawaiian Village resort from February 18–21, 2013. The interdisciplinary field of quantitative biology (q-bio) has expanded tremendously in the last several years, especially with the growth of systems and synthetic biology as integral components of q-bio. The organizers for this first Winter Q-bio meeting were led by Jeff Hasty (University of California, San Diego; San Diego, USA) and included Bill Ditto (University of Hawaii, Manoa, USA), William Hlavacek (University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA), Alex Hoffmann (University of California, San Diego; San Diego, USA), Brian Munsky (New Mexico Consortium, Los Alamos, USA) and Lev Tsimring, (University of California, San Diego; San Diego, USA). The idea was to capitalize on the growing interest in the intersection of the physical and biologic sciences by bringing together scientists, from all different backgrounds and expertise, interested in quantitative principles of biologic systems. In this report, we've highlighted a few themes that we took home from the meeting.