Emergent Computations in Biological and Medical Systems: From Theory to Applications
A special issue of Computation (ISSN 2079-3197). This special issue belongs to the section "Computational Biology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2027 | Viewed by 73
Editors
Interests: complex systems; theory of computing; emergence; computational biology; biosignals; entropy; modeling
Interests: complex systems; complexity theory; dynamical systems; nonlinear models
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This Special Issue focuses on computational models and methods for studying emergent phenomena in living systems—from cellular collectives to tissues and organs. Despite the diversity of biological processes (e.g., tissue remodeling, limb regeneration, cardiac synchronization, neural circuit formation), they share a common challenge: how do local, simple interactions give rise to global, functional patterns?
Important research areas, which express emergent computations, include immune systems, gut and other tissue microbiota ecosystems, functional blocks within neuronal systems, ecological systems, physiological regulation, cancer behavior, systemic inflammation, and many other system-wide functionalities of living organisms and systems.
Purely theoretical approaches enable emergent computing research in medicine due to ethical reasons.
Addressing this challenge requires computational approaches capable of capturing bottom-up, parallel, and self-organizing behaviors. We invite contributions that develop or apply methods including, but not limited to the following:
- Agent-based modeling and cellular automata for morphogenesis, development, and repair;
- Graph-based and network models for physiological synchronization (e.g., heart–brain interactions);
- Massively parallel algorithms for simulating collective cellular behaviors;
- Machine learning methods for identifying or predicting emergent patterns;
- Evolvable, adaptive, or bio-inspired computational paradigms reflecting principles of emergence.
The goal is to bring together computational and biological researchers working on formalizing, simulating, and experimentally validating emergent computations across scales. Both theoretical advances and application-driven studies (including tissue engineering, limb regrowth, cancer as disrupted emergence, and organ-level synchronization) are welcome.
Dr. Jiří Kroc
Prof. Dr. Ricardo Lopez-Ruiz
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Computation is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- emergent computing
- massively parallel computing environments
- theory of computing
- living systems
- agent-based modeling
- cellular automata
- tissue engineering
- bottom-up phenomena
- systemic synchronization
- ecosystem dynamics
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