Summer Program
Physics of Collective Function in Active Living Matter
August 9–September 6, 2026
Organizers:
Tzer Han Tan,University of California San Diego
Jasmine Nirody, University of Chicago
Asja Radja, Bryn Mawr College
Suraj Shankar, University of Michigan
Biological systems exhibit complex functions, often utilizing collective behaviors and nonequilibrium phenomena that facilitate information sensing and processing. Recent discoveries using data-driven methods, field measurements, and active matter modeling have identified novel interactions and emergent behavior in diverse biological systems, from bird flocks and firefly swarms to growing plants. The aim of this workshop is to bring together a diverse interdisciplinary group of physicists, engineers, biologists, and computer scientists to explore how feedback, control, and optimization of information flow interplays with nonequilibrium physics to generate novel functions in living matter. The diverse ways in which biological collectives address common physical problems create a fertile ground for discovering unifying principles. Moving beyond traditional active systems, the workshop will foster new connections, identify key challenges, and uncover opportunities in multiscale, multicomponent, and multiphase active matter, revealing nonequilibrium physics principles that govern functions and adaptation in living systems across scale.
Summer Workshops
The summer program, running for 16 weeks from late-May to mid-September, emphasizes exciting open problems at the cutting edge. Two or three concurrent workshops, each with a specific focus selected for timeliness and the potential for breakthroughs and of two to five weeks in length, establish the main themes of each week, with twelve or thirteen different workshops each summer, balanced across fields including particle physics, string theory, astrophysics and hard and soft condensed matter physics, as well as emerging areas including biological physics, ultra-cold atom physics, quantum information, and physical mathematics. Additional researchers participate in small working groups or as individual researchers. This framework is designed to maximize informal interactions and free discussion within each area and to promote cross-fertilization between different areas via the common language of theoretical physics. Participation in the summer program of the Aspen Center for Physics is by application and subsequent invitation only. View past workshops.
