Event Info
Event Description
This year’s forum will feature the topic “Biophysics” and will be hosted at the University of Basel. As with past forums, the YPF’s main attraction is a series of lectures on this year’s topic, held by professors and experts active in the field.
Participants who register for the event will spend a weekend — from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon — together with like-minded physics students from all Swiss universities. In addition to the lecture series, the programme includes a variety of social and networking activities, offering students the opportunity to exchange ideas, discuss, reflect, and enjoy a physics-themed weekend in an engaging academic environment.
To make the event accessible to students from all Swiss universities, accommodation, meals, and public transport within the host city are included in the registration fee (more info under registration). This is made possible through the generous support of our sponsors, who share our goal of fostering a vibrant and connected community of physics students in Switzerlan
What is Biophysics?
Biophysics is the application of physical principles and quantitative methods to biological systems. For physicists, it offers a natural extension of core topics such as classical mechanics, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism into the realm of living matter. The central goal of biophysics is to identify the governing physical laws that underlie biological structure, dynamics, and function across multiple length and time scales.
Current research in biophysics addresses questions such as how molecular interactions give rise to protein structure and function, how thermal fluctuations and non-equilibrium processes drive cellular dynamics, and how collective behavior emerges in complex biological systems. Topics of active interest include soft matter and active matter physics in cells and tissues, mechanics of cytoskeletal networks, transport processes in membranes, and information processing in biological systems. These problems often require combining analytical theory, numerical simulation, and high-precision experiments.
For physics students, biophysics provides an opportunity to apply rigorous modeling and data analysis techniques to systems that are inherently stochastic, heterogeneous, and out of equilibrium. At the same time, it motivates the development of new theoretical frameworks and experimental tools. As such, biophysics represents both a rich testing ground for fundamental physics and a field with direct relevance to medicine, biotechnology, and emerging interdisciplinary research.
Logistics
Will come soon…
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