Speaker: Prof. Artur Ekert

Professor of Quantum Physics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, UK.

Speaker: Prof. Klaus Müllen

Director of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research

Speaker: Dr. Bruce Alberts

Chancellor’s Leadership Chair in Biochemistry & Biophysics for Science & Education. University of California, San Francisco.

Speaker: Dr. Eugene W. Meyers, Director, Center for Systems Biology Dresden
Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics

Origami, the exquisite craft of folding paper into three-dimensional shapes, has been practiced for millennia by artists and lay people. Prof. Mahadevan will discuss some physical aspects of rigid and soft origami associated with the weak and strong deformations of thin sheets of any material. The efficient packing properties of folded matter suggest that it ought to occur naturally in physical and biological systems, and he will show that they do indeed appear on a range of scales, e.g. in drying gels, wings, leaves and even your gut as a self-organized pattern. These physical manifestations of origami suggest the question of how to design the number, location and orientation of folds to create complex shapes. Prof. Mahadevan will finish his talk with a description of attempts to solve this inverse problem, and its generalizations.

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard helped decipher the logic of the genes required to control early embryonic development.  Based on her research, a plethora of transcription control genes was discovered and found to be conserved throughout evolution.  In her talk she will discuss the basic mechanisms needed to establish a distinct pattern of cells during embryogenesis.  She will also talk about the point of beauty in nature as well as why animals have patterns, a subject on which she has been writing a book.  Her research laid the conceptual foundation for our understanding of organ formation and regeneration using the developmental control genes.

As a first of OIST Presidential Lecture Series, Dr. Hitoshi Murayama, Director of Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, the University of Tokyo, will talk about Dark Matter and Dark Energy, which are considered to make up 95% of the Universe.