Program Manager: Dr. Benjamin Mann
 Biology encompasses a vast array of interconnected phenomena spanning many decades in spatiotemporal scale. Every biological system, whether as complicated as the human body or as simple as a virus, exists within and interacts in a complex way with a complex environment. This implies that characterization of even simple biological systems can only be accomplished through acquisition of enormous data sets, built through observations within a coordinate space of very high dimensionality.
The Fundamental Laws of Biology (FunBio) Program has assembled a well-balanced team of biologists, mathematicians, and physicists to develop a synergistic community and common language to—
- Bring new mathematical perspectives to biology.
- Use the stimulus of those challenges to create new mathematics that will reveal unanticipated structures in large complex systems.
- Explain biological organization at multiple scales.
- Discover the fundamental laws of biology that span all biological scales.
The initial phase of the program focuses on identifying key fundamental problems in biology and promising innovative mathematical techniques to approach these problems. Later phases will translate this new mathematical language into testable theories of biological phenomenon with the goal of establishing fundamental, predictive laws of biology.
The program will impact DoD and national security by developing a rational and predictive basis for doing biological research to combat bioterrorism, maintain healthy personnel, and discover new vaccines and medicines.
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