Shared Principles Between the Computing and Biological Sciences

The purpose of this workshop was to bring together leading biologists and computational scientists interested in exploring shared principles between computing and biology. These two communities have a shared history of mutual influence where the transfer of concepts and tools has resulted in significant advances in both fields. Typically, the computing community develops techniques useful to the biological sciences such as mathematical models or search algorithms, while the biological sciences community develops hypotheses, which inspire new computational techniques such as swarm theory, genetic algorithms, and learning theories. This workshop was intended to take the discussion further, and ask to what extent there are larger organizing principles that are shared between computer science and biology, and whether the exploration of such shared principles might enable new and deeper collaborations between the two communities. The ultimate goal of the workshop was to yield of set of a and recommendations that will be helpful to NSF program officers in identifying new directions, designing new cross-disciplinary programs, and facilitating collaborations.