More than ever, biology requires a quantitative approach for the understanding of biological processes. It is in this context that quantitative biology emerges, a branch of research that uses mathematics and physics to understand the function of living cells and organisms in general. By combining quantitative experimental techniques and computational models, quantitative biology feeds the global knowledge of biology and helps gain a greater insight into the interactions that take place between and within living beings.

The increasing importance of quantitative biology in scientific research has encouraged the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences at UPF (DCEXS-UPF) to focus the 5^th edition of its annual symposium on this field. Thus, on Wednesday 21 September, from 8.45 am, the 5^th Symposium on Quantitative Biology DCEXS: a biological system-level approach will be held at the Auditorium of the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park. The conference will also serve as the closing ceremony of the International Conference on Systems Biology 2016, held this year in Barcelona by UPF and the CRG. The leader of the DCEXS’s Dynamical Systems Biology lab, Jordi García Ojalvo, is the main organizer of the Symposium together with James Sharpe, ICREA researcher and programme director of the research group on Systems Biology of the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG).

The director of the DCEXS, David Comas, will welcome participants at the symposium. Among the guest speakers are Ala Trusina, associate professor at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark); Michael Elowitz, researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (USA) and professor of Biology, Biological Engineering and Applied Physics at Caltech (USA); Galit Lahav, principal researcher at the Department of Systems Biology at the Harvard Medical School (USA), and Buzz Baum, head of the Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology of the University College London (UK). The programme is completed by a number of leading researchers in systems biology who will explore the possibilities of quantitative biology as a tool for biomedicine.

The aim of the annual DCEXS symposium is to present the department’s research programmes and promote the education of young scientists, as well as provide a place where researchers can discuss their latest results. This is the fifth year that the DCEXS has held the symposium. The fields dealt with at previous editions are in silico strategies in biomedicine, neurosciences and genetics, evolutionary biology, and cell signalling.