I was at the IZS in Zurich last week, a spectacular conference in a beautiful location. I used my invited paper as an opportunity to explain what biological information theory is, and why I think it is important [PDF link]: www.research-collection.ethz.ch/server/api/c...
Great post on rationalism versus empiricism in the history of optimal control.
In 1874, Georg Cantor published one of the most important papers in math’s 4,000-year history. The ideas in it were stolen. 🧵
Fascinating paper — molecular error correction might not incur an accuracy/speed tradeoff. In fact, it may be favored by evolution simply due to increased speed
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
The shape at left is angular, while the shape at right has rounded bulges. This picture is used as a test to demonstrate that people may not attach sounds to shapes arbitrarily. From here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Booba-Kiki.svg
Which of these shapes looks like the sound "bouba", and which looks like the sound "kiki"?
People of all cultures agree on this, and now it's been found that baby chicks do too:
phys.org/news/2026-02...
It's called the bouba/kiki effect, and I think it follows from physics!
(1/2)
Our paper w/ @maguilera.net & Sosuke Ito is out in PRL. We combine ideas from stochastic thermodynamics & nonequilibrium Maximum Entropy to quantify forces + dissipation in high-dimensional nonequilibrium systems, including spin glasses and neural data
link: journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...
Joe Halpern passed away Friday at the age of 72. He was a leader in mathematically reasoning about knowledge.
www.linkedin.com/pos...
☀️ 2026 Summer School in the Pyrenees - Unifying Mathematical Models of Biodiversity
Applications are now open!
This school offers a state-of-the-art overview for interdisciplinary theoreticians.
🗓️ July 5-11
🎯 PhD students to senior researchers
ℹ️ intp.science/en/summer26....
📭 contact@intp.science
🌐🧪
Can we engineer cognition in aneural systems? What are the challenges and implications? Can synthetic biology be used to interrogate basal cognition? Our new paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social explores these questions using models of minimal gene circuits. Available here pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
"In other words, European taxpayers will have spent more on the funding process than on the funding itself, and the scientific ecosystem has been drained"
The situation is rapidly becoming unsustainable: the current research funding scheme does not work.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
A remarkable preprint that shows emergence of active protocells from simple starting conditions
If you work on the origins of life / prebiotic chemistry, consider joining OoLEN 🧬🌍
We’re an early-career community for connecting across disciplines, sharing opportunities, and building momentum together.
Join: oolen.org/join
(And feel free to reply with what you work on!)
#OriginOfLife
Interested in the intersection of nonequilibrium thermodynamics and biophysics? Think Canada might be a nice place for your PhD/postdoc? Talk to me! Brand-new funding opportunity has quick deadline (so likely undersubscribed). nserc-crsng.canada.ca/en/news/laun...
SFU internal deadline Feb 11
Yes, its possible to have local maxima of entropy. Supercooled water is one example, as are other phase transitions that require a "nucleation" event. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleat...
"Choosing problems is the primary determinant of what one accomplishes in science."
'Now What?' by Nobel Laureate John Hopfield should be required reading for aspiring scientists.
pni.princeton.edu/document/1136
New paper in PRL on the relationship between thermodynamic driving and eigenvalues in Markovian master equations. We prove a weaker version of a beautiful conjecture proposed by Uhl and Seifert. Led by Guo-Hua Xu, with Jean-Charles Delvenne and Sosuke Ito
journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...
Cooperation is a universal feature of complex systems, from the origins of life and microbiomes to societies. What universal patterns can be found in these systems? Here's our new @pnas.org paper. @jordipinero.bsky.social @artemyte.bsky.social @sfiscience.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....
The characterization of life as a thermodynamic phenomenon out of equilibrium is usually attributed to Schrödinger.
What if I told you that he wasn't the first (not even the second😶🌫️) to reach that famous and influential conclusion?/1
#complexitycat🐈⬛
amahury.github.io/posts/reinve...
It's part of a great special issue on fundamental constraints on the origins of life, organized by
@ricardsole.bsky.social and Chris Kempes royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202...
After a long time in the making, my paper on nonequilibrium thermodynamics of Darwinian evolution has been published in Philosophical Transactions B. Updated version: arxiv.org/abs/2112.02809
How dit life originate in our planet? How can we create it in the lab?Our @royalsocietypublishing.org Theme Issue "Origins of Life: the possible and the actual", coedited with @sfiscience.bsky.social C Kempes and Susan Stepney is out! royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202... @manlius.bsky.social
Possible biosignatures detected on Mars
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Reading this beautiful review of the "cutoff timescale" in Markov chains, the timescale over which a system relaxes from nonequilibrium to equilibrium behavior arxiv.org/abs/2508.21055
This new center strikes the right tone in approaching the AI alignment problem. alignmentalignment.ai
Can a single cell learn? Even without a brain, some microbes show simple forms of cognition. Can this basal cognition be engineered? Check our new paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social on the minimal synthetic circuits & their cognitive limits. @drmichaellevin.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Helping to organize this workshop on quantum and stochastic thermodynamics in Kyoto, Japan, Dec 8-12. Resource theory, optimal transport, and more. Submissions open!
indico.yukawa.kyoto-u.ac.jp/event/68/
Here is our new paper that we're really excited about. What makes a cell different from a rock? The answer we argue is the USE of information. But information carries meaning and that changes everything if we want to understand the "physics of life".
journals.aps.org/prxlife/abst...
Proud of this preprint with my friends Jonathan Bauermann and @artemyte.bsky.social, about chemical oscillators & phase separation! Main findings:
1. Phase separation controls frequency and amplitude of oscillations
2. If reactions are fast, spirals of droplets emerge!
arxiv.org/abs/2507.16030
How can we build a general theory of mutualistic communities? After five years, we finally completed a new Neutral Theory of Cooperation that is fully solved analytically and displays remarkable properties @jordipinero.bsky.social @artemyte.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2506.09737
We have a new preprint about measuring entropy production in high-dimensional systems, using ideas from information geometry. We successfully infer EP from brain recordings and spin models containing 1000+ degrees of freedom. With
@maguilera.net and Sosuke Ito arxiv.org/abs/2505.10444
