Rob Phillips

Rob Phillips’s first visit to NCBS was prior to the official launch of the Simons Centre. Along with Jane Kondev, Rob ran a week-long workshop at NCBS on the Physical Biology of the Cell, targeted at our more theoretically minded PhD students but also at experimental biologists who were interested in developing a more quantitative understanding of their work. During his visit in December 2013 Rob participated in the launch of the Simons Centre, during which he led a discussion on the role of theory in biology. Potential future collaborations between Mukund Thattai’s group and the Phillips group include questions in evolutionary cell biology, particularly on whether physical constraints on cellular organization have evolutionary implications. These questions were explored during a longterm program evolutionary cell biology program organized by Mukund Thattai at the Kavli Insitute for Theoretical Physics in 2010. Rob Phillips is one of the organizers of a follow-up program at KITP on the same topic, in the fall of 2015.