Dresden International Graduate School for Interdisciplinary Life Sciences

Biological Physics & Quantitative Biology

Biological Physics applies approaches and methods of physics to unravel the underlying organizational principles of biological systems. Quantitative Biology addresses problems in biology, biomedicine, and ecology through image analysis, theory, computer simulations, and data visualization. Dresden is an internationally recognized hub for scientists working at the interface between physics, biology and computational science. We focus on the investigation of phenomena across all relevant scales – from individual molecules to sub-cellular organization and cellular properties to tissues, organs, and organisms. We ask how complex system behavior on a large scale can emerge from simpler physical and chemical interactions at smaller scales. We address these questions through close collaborations between theoretical physicists who provide the conceptual and modelling framework, experimental groups who develop and apply state-of-the-art techniques to obtain quantitative data, and cell and developmental biologists who provide the necessary biological expertise. Our tools include image analysis and image quantification algorithms, model-based image segmentation and cell tracking algorithms, adaptive particle methods for spatio-temporal simulations, parallel high-performance computing, multi-scale mechanistic model simulations, and deep learning.