 William Bialek
Faculty Fellow
John Archibald Wheeler/Battelle Professor of Physics & Member of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics
Homepage
258-7014 (Amie Weisert, assistant)
237 Icahn Lab
E-mail
Can we imagine a theoretical physics of biological systems? Could such theories engage with the experimental details of particular systems, yet still be derivable from general principles? These are the questions that motivate my research. I have been especially interested in optimization principles: the possibility that biological mechanisms provide the best possible solutions to basic physics problems in the life of the organism, such as sensing small signals in the presence of noise and reliably controlling events that involve small numbers of molecules. I have worked closely with experimentalists to discover new examples of optimization, from bacteria to brains, and am interested in finding more powerful theoretical formulations of these ideas that can unify our understanding of these diverse phenomena.
|
