CFP: What can Synthetic Biology offer to Artificial Intelligence and Vice Versa

Submission deadline: November 15, 2014

Topic areas

Details

What can Synthetic Biology offer to

Artificial Intelligence and Vice Versa?

Journal Special Issue – BioSystems (Elsevier)

Guest Editors: L. Damiano1, Y. Kuruma2, and P. Stano3

 

1 CERCO (Research Centre on Complex Systems), ESARG (Epistemology of the Sciences of the Artificial Research Group), University of Bergamo, Italy

2Earth and Life Science Institute, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan

3Science Department, University Roma 3, Italy


Topics

The emergence of the “embodied approach” in the cognitive sciences and AI increasingly focuses the investigations in these fields on the role(s) played by the body’s self-production and bodily interactions in cognition. This re-integration of the biological body in the scientific study of cognition, directed towards overcoming the Cartesian dichotomy characterizing classical cognitive science and AI, is progressing while significant advancements in the biological sciences are taking place.

One of the most notable is the development of Synthetic Biology (SB), a research area dedicated to the synthesis and assembly of biological parts, systems and/or processes to modify extant biological cells, or, in the most ambitious cases, to build synthetic cells. The constitution of this new field offers to the scientific community a new way of exploring the role played by the body in cognitive process: extending AI research within the domain of experimental biology, i.e., assigning to SB the task of building and experimentally studying minimal synthetic models of cognitive systems and processes.

The Special Issue “What can Synthetic Biology offer to Artificial Intelligence and Vice Versa?” is directed towards the creation of an highly interdisciplinary community able of critically discuss, fruitfully correlate and programmatically improve the emergent research programs involving cooperation between SB and AI in the exploration of cognitive processes. The main idea is that of promoting the interaction between experimental research and theoretical and/or epistemological reflection, and the emergence of a strongly interdisciplinary front line in SB, AI, philosophy of science and related fields that cooperatively tackle issues as the following:

  • Can SB constructively explore the embodied cognition and intelligence through the constitution of biological systems and phenomena? If yes, how? In which conditions and in what ways could this exploration positively contribute to AI research? That is: What can SB offer to AI?
  • Can SB support the structuring process of an effective Embodied Approach to the cognitive sciences and AI? Why and how?
  • How concrete collaborations between computer science, robotics and SB can develop studies on natural forms of intelligence?
  • Can SB contribute to the development of new forms of cognition alternative to the ones we know?
  • Can AI (and what kind of AI) be involved in SB approaches? And how?
  • In addition to the mathematical approach of systems biology, what kind of technical tools, abstractions, visions and methods – those that are typical of AI – can be useful to SB?
Call for Papers

We ask for both position papers proposing specific methodologies and/or approaches, and papers describing empirical and/or theoretical original research. In particular, we will be looking for papers focusing on:

-current/possible research programs and/or approaches involving SB in AI’s research and vice versa;

-the discussion of the role that SB can play in AI’s research, based on theoretical arguments and/or empirical studies;

-the investigation of one or more aspects of the (possible/ actual) cooperative relationship(s) between SB and AI.

Papers should be long between 4000 and 6000 words (references excluded).

Important dates

Paper submission deadline: 15 November 2014

Notification to authors: 15 February 2015

Submission of authors' revised papers: 15 March  2015

Final acceptance: 30 May 2015

(Publication: 10 weeks after the final acceptance)
***Please, note that these dates could be modified during the review process.

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