Symposium Engineering Life 2017: Form and Function

The Engineering Life Conference 2017 “Form and Function”, organized by the B CUBE Center for Molecular Bioengineering at TU Dresden, focused on recent advances and state-of-the-art techniques directed at understanding functionalities found in biological systems that stem from the morphology and the form of the constituents. The various sessions of the meeting emphasized the different length scales: from the molecular, to cellular, to tissue level and evolutionary aspects of morphogenesis.

From the 19th to the 20th of October, leading researchers from all over the world met in Dresden reporting recent findings and developments, and discussing future perspectives in the relationship between Form and Function across a variety of research field. Highlights included, for example, lectures by Manuel Théry (Institut Universitaire d'Hematologie, France) who described new findings in microtubule network mechanics and architecture, and Julia Mahamid (EMBL, Germany), reporting recent advances in cryo-electron microscopy techniques. Adam Summers (University of Washington, Friday Harbor, USA) fascinated the audience with 3D tomographic study of a variety of marine organisms, and Itai Cohen (Cornell University, USA) provided impressive insights into Form and Function in atomic origami, beyond the field of biology.

The poster prize was sponsored by Lioptype (http://www.lipotype.com) and was awarded to:

1^st prize: Abin Biswas (IRI Life Sciences, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)

2^nd prize: Celina Love (MPI-CBG Dresden) und Smrithika Subramani (MPI for Dynamics and Selft Organization, Göttingen)

This was the 4^th biennial Engineering Life symposium and the next symposium is planned for autumn 2019.