The study and identification of quantum phenomena in biological systems is an interdisciplinary field that has attracted increasing attention in the past few decades, but has slowly progressed in part due to different background of physical scientists and biologists. This workshop will bring young and senior scientists together from different scientific disciplines including biology, physics, chemistry, and quantum information science to discuss processes in biology that require quantum theory, like chemical reactions, charge transport, and quantum biological phenomena, where the quantum process is used by the biological system for a particular function, such as magneto reception, photon absorption in vision, and photosynthesis. The workshop will contribute toward defining current important topics and questions to be addressed with future research, and will stimulate and possibly identify new research topics of quantum phenomena in biological systems with applications in quantum information science and condensed matter physics.
This workshop is co-funded by the Molecular Biophysics Program in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences in the Biological Sciences Directorate and the Physics of Living Systems Program in the Division of Physics in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.