The meeting will take place in the first week of September in 2012 at the Mediterranean coast of France. The aim of the meeting is to bring together eminent researchers from interdisciplinary fields working on various aspects of cell and tissue biophysics including adhesion, mechano-sensing, morphogenesis, transport, single molecule studies etc. We hope to stimulate exchange of ideas between theorists and experimentalists, and between physicists, chemists and biologists. We also hope for large participation from young and emerging scientists who would benefit vastly from exposure to this eclectic gathering.

A two and a half days of advanced school, aimed at graduate students as well as researchers at the interface of biology with physical sciences, will precede the four day conference. The conference is the second in the series on Cell Biophysics and is a follow up of the first meeting "Physics of Cells - PhysCell2009" which was organized in 2009 in Croatia in honour of Prof. Erich Sackmann. The current meeting will be dedicated to Pierre Gilles deGennes and will benefit from close collaboration with the foundation set up in his memory.

CMMP11, with a wide range of symposia will reflect the breadth of condensed matter and materials physics - this series of conferences attracts the highest quality invited and plenary talks, and offers a forum for student presentations.

The conference includes:

• Plenary lectures, given by internationally recognised speakers.
• A wide range of symposia with both invited and contributed talks. The final programme will include symposia reflecting your contributions.
• Poster sessions enabling scientists to present their work in an informal and convivial setting.

The Mainz Materials Simulation Days are a series of discussion meetings focusing on method developments in computational materials science. The workshops are jointly organized by the groups of Prof. Kurt Kremer at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research and Prof. Friederike Schmid at the Physics Institute of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. They will typically be of a 2 days duration starting at noon on Wednesday and finishing at noon on Friday.

We are planning this workshop for a total attendance not exceeding 80 people, to enable an atmosphere of lively discussions.

The fourth workshop will focus on various aspects of

Assembly and structure formation in biological systems, e.g. protein self-assembly; (multiscale) modelimg of biological materials

Driven Soft Matter Systems

Workshop on biomaterials and their interactions with biological and model membranes 2011 will be held at the hotel Magnolia****, Salou (Costa Dorada), Spain, 19-23 September 2011.

The general topic of the meeting is the interaction of synthetic polymers, nanoparticles, surfactants, proteins, small biomolecules with biological and model phospholipid membranes. Leading scientists and experts from biology, chemistry, physics, engineering and industry will participate in the meeting to give it a true multidisciplinary environment.

The meeting is planned in form of oral talks, posters and discussion pannels, where experts from different fields can share their knowledge interactively.

The investigation of phenomena at hybrid biomaterials interfaces poses so far unresolved challenges to accurate, atomistic computational methods, since it involves dealing with mutually interacting phenomena spanning multiple time and length scales and requiring different levels of precision. In the biological community, deciphering the physics of complex units from motor proteins to ribosomes, from membrane channels to DNA packaging in the cell nucleus, has become possible by the advent of many new technologies to analyze and manipulate molecular systems at highest precision. Combining high-resolution structural analysis with high-performance computing enabled furthermore to simulate how the intrinsic structural movements of biological nanosystems combined with their optical, electrical or mechanical properties control or regulate their functions. Also aided by high-performance computing, new functional hybrid-materials were designed, some of which were inspired by biological systems. Understanding life from its molecular foundation, learning from it for technical applications and investigating how the interactions between living structures interact and the technical world may stimulate novel routes for materials design has become a very attractive field of research these days.

Presently, dynamical simulations of large chemical and/or biological molecules or of surface phenomena must rely on classical molecular dynamics to address the size and time scales relevant for such systems. However, there are some fundamental functions of proteins which require a quantum mechanical description. This includes catalytic reactions in enzymes, photo-induced processes in fluorescent proteins, light-energy conversion reactions in the photosynthesis. The same is true in materials science, where reactive adsorption processes on surfaces have to be described quantum mechanically in order to catch the basic features of the electron dynamics and related reactive chemistry. The level of complexity is increasing even more if the biosystems meet technical surfaces, interact chemically and form new functional units. The particular challenge in describing the dynamics of such hybrid systems involves:

(i) the quantum mechanical description of large molecules interacting with materials substrates,
(ii) combined quantum/classical/continuum descriptions to treat environmental conditions and
(iii) stochastic quantum mechanics combined with molecular dynamics to explore an extended configurational space.

The aim of this workshop is to review, critically asses and compare the various ways to coarse-grain complex polymeric and biomolecular assemblies. In addition, the workshop will consider the conceptual and methodological challenges which arise when coarse-graining ideas are extended to dynamical problems and rheological properties of complex fluids.

The workshop will allow a confrontation of existing models and methodologies, like united atom descriptions, bond fluctuation models, effective segment and multi-blob approaches, non-Boltzmann sampling, self-consistent field theories, dissipative particle dynamics, density functional theory (DFT and its dynamical extension DDFT), multiparticle collisional dynamics, etc.

Multiscale modeling will be at the center of attention [8], as a bridging technique between microscopic and coarse grained descriptions. We will focus on coarse graining of linear chains, like homopolymers [5] or block copolymers [9], on systems with a more complex architecture, such as polymer brushes, dendrimers [10], microgels and star polymers mixed with polymer chains [11] and on the melt [12].

A particularly important class of complex fluids is provided by solutions of biopolymers, like DNA, RNA and proteins, which are among the natural systems that exhibit most striking self-assembling properties. The latter are fundamental building blocks of living organisms and viruses and their function is encoded in the structural elements they are made of. This is a rather unique property that stirs the interest of scientists from very different backgrounds. Although there are many different proteins with different structures and functions, they are all made of chains of the same 20 fundamental chemical units called amino acids. Biomolecules therefore represent a considerable theoretical challenge because of their intrinsic complexity. Fully atomistic models (although very precise in reproducing several experimental structural data) are computationally too expensive and they make the process of isolating the fundamental physical parameters a very difficult task. It is the objective of the proposed workshop to focus on bridging the gap between fully atomistic and simplified models for proteins. The state of the art of coarse graining strategies for bio-polymers will be discussed, providing an overview of current models such as effective potential models, the tube [13, 14], the caterpillar [15], and various models for DNA and RNA [16]. The workshop will give the opportunity to open new directions for future studies of important problems such as protein aggregation, protein design, structure prediction, and protein - bio-molecules interaction (protein- protein, protein - DNA/RNA and protein - membrane), all the way to protein evolution while retaining a high level of accuracy ensuring qualitative and quantitative predictive power. Extending further the applicability of coarse graining descriptions, the workshop will then focus on the study of the interface between bio materials and soft matter, e.g. studies of self-assembly of DNA coated colloids [17].

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together scientists from different backgrounds (simulation, theory and experiment) interested in the development of novel coarse-grained models to study the self-assembly processes in soft matter. In particular the discussion will be focused on the advantages and disadvantages of the different methodologies, and on the possibility of developing new methods that combine different computational approaches. Topics will range from "CG force field” development to simulations at the different relevant scales.
With this workshop we aim to answer the following striking questions that must be addressed to develop reliable computational methods to simulate self assembly mechanisms:
• How many details do we need to retain in our models to keep the appropriate physics and chemistry in the CG model?
• What general or particular forms of the intermolecular forces can describe the self assembly process and how can they be efficiently included in the CG models?
• How does the reduction of the degrees of freedom affect the dynamics of the self assembly mechanism?
• What are the optimal strategies for down-up (from atomistic simulation results) or top-down (from macroscopic experimental data) coarse-graining?
• How can we directly or indirectly describe the controlling variables for self-assembly (pH, temperature, pressure, solvents,concentration)
• Is it possible to investigate the disassembly mechanism?

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together scientists from different backgrounds (simulation, theory and experiment) interested in the development of novel coarse-grained models to study the self-assembly processes in soft matter. In particular the discussion will be focused on the advantages and disadvantages of the different methodologies, and on the possibility of developing new methods that combine different computational approaches. Topics will range from "CG force field” development to simulations at the different relevant scales.
With this workshop we aim to answer the following striking questions that must be addressed to develop reliable computational methods to simulate self assembly mechanisms:

• How many details do we need to retain in our models to keep the appropriate physics and chemistry in the CG model?
• What general or particular forms of the intermolecular forces can describe the self assembly process and how can they be efficiently included in the CG models?
• How does the reduction of the degrees of freedom affect the dynamics of the self assembly mechanism?
• What are the optimal strategies for down-up (from atomistic simulation results) or top-down (from macroscopic experimental data) coarse-graining?
• How can we directly or indirectly describe the controlling variables for self-assembly (pH, temperature, pressure, solvents,concentration)
• Is it possible to investigate the disassembly mechanism?

The field of biobased polymers in all the involved areas is still in its infancy. This is even true for the bacterial polyesters that, although developed a long time ago, are not yet produced in full scale mostly for economical reasons. Polylactides –the most successful among the biobased polymers– are produced at a very minor level of the total production of polymers. Biorelated polymers are bringing also an additional value, namely degradability. On the other hand, polymeric biomaterials and their potential in different fields, mainly biology and biomedicine, are in an advanced state, but yet expanding in scope and impact.

Thus, the aims of this Conference are to review the present state of research in the area of biobased/biorelated polymers, and to provide a forum for discussion of future progress and prospect. Chemistry, physics and application of biobased/biorelated polymers and polymeric biomaterials will be covered.

The Conference will be based on invited lectures, oral communications and poster papers. Major topics are:

• Polymers from renewable resources
• Green chemistry and sustainability of polymers
• Degradable and biodegradable polymers
• Polymers at the interfaces with life sciences
• Biocompatible polymers and polymeric biomaterials

The thirty-first edition of the "Journées de Physique Statistique" will take place as in previous years at the l'Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie de Paris, 10 rue Vauquelin, Paris 5ème, building N, top floor.

The aim of the conference is to bring together scientists working on the liquid state of matter and on closely related topics, such as soft matter and biophysics. Thus the rapidly growing field covered by this conference series includes the physics, chemistry, biology, and chemical engineering of liquid matter as well as several areas of applied research.

The conference will consist of plenary lectures, topical symposia with keynote lectures and contributed oral presentations, as well as poster sessions. The highlights of the conference will be published in a special issue of the Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter.
Topics

1. Ionic and quantum liquids, liquid metals
2. Water, solutions and reaction dynamics
3. Liquid crystals
4. Polymers, polyelectrolytes, biopolymers
5. Colloids
6. Films, foams, surfactants, emulsions, aerosols
7. Confined fluids, interfacial phenomena
8. Supercooled liquids, glasses, gels
9. Non-equilibrium systems, rheology, nanofluidics
10. Biofluids, active matter

The conference will cover all the topics of Statistical Physics:

A. Foundations and theoretical aspects of classical, quantum and relativistic statistical physics and thermodynamics.

B. Mathematical aspects and methods: formalism, rigorous results, exact solutions, connections with the methods of high energy physics, string theory, mathematical statistics and information theory.

C. Nonequilibrium systems: classical, quantum and relativistic transport theory, Boltzmann and Fokker-Planck kinetics, nonlinear kinetics, dynamical systems, relaxation phenomena, random systems, chemical reactions, pattern formation etc.

D. Applications to physical systems: quantum systems, soft condensed matter, plasmas, fluids, surfaces and interfaces, disordered and glassy systems etc.

E. Interdisciplinary applications of statistical physics: biophysics, econophysics, social systems, networks, traffic flow, algorithmic problems, complex systems, etc.

F. Numerical Physics: Numerical methods and computer simulations in statistical physics, condensed mater, complex systems etc.

From 14 to 17 June 2011, the elite of Simulation Technology research spotlights the city of Stuttgart for one of the major events in the Academic Year 2011: the International Conference on Simulation Technology (SimTech 2011). For four days, the University of Stuttgart will be all about molecular simulations, multi-scale and multi-physics mechanics, numerical mathematics and interactive visualisation.

These are just some of the research areas of SimTech - the Cluster of Excellence. More than 150 scientists from Stuttgart are currently conducting their high-class research within the cluster. At SimTech 2011, they present their latest results and start a discourse with researchers from the international community.

This conference is aimed at elucidating progress and challenges at the biological frontier of soft matter and polymer physics. Specifically, the conference will discuss important aspects of soft matter physics and their application to biological systems. It will also discuss the implementation of soft matter physics in the design of biomimetic materials. Within this conceptual framework the following topics will be addressed: Chromosomes and large scale DNA packing; Genome packing and self-organization of viruses; Protein-DNA interactions; Force transduction and cell motility; DNA based nanotechnology; Nanochannels; Physics views on biological evolution.

The conference will comprise invited lectures by leading scientists, as well as "virtual poster” session, in which everyone will have the chance to present his or her work on the conference web site ahead of time and then will introduce it in a short 2-3 minutes presentation, thereby encouraging for everyone intense interactions on the subjects of individual choice.