The central purpose of the proposed meeting is to air and discuss (in a """"""""workshop"""""""" atmosphere) suggestions for principles that guide the effective operation of distributed autonomous systems, with a strong but not exclusive emphasis on the immune system. The immune system is of cardinal biological and medical importance. Because of this, a great deal of information is available concerning its operation -- from submolecular detail with time scales as low as fractions of seconds to cellular population fluctuations over months. Moreover, although the immune system is extremely complex, yet the broad outlines of its functions seem fairly clear. Because of its importance, its complexity, and the depth to which it is understood, the immune system is an ideal focus for this meeting. We are convinced that the topics to be discussed are part of the wave of the future in biology (for example in the direction of """"""""functional genomics"""""""" and similar efforts to embed molecular biology into global biological considerations) and in theoretical science (with its exploding interests in complex biological systems). Thus in addition to the various senior experts we wish to invite some of the brightest young students and investigators in immunology, physics, mathematics and computer science who are interested in systemic issues.
