The integrated project PACE focuses on the IT potential of truly artificial cells: addressing both the technical opportunities of programmable artificial cells and an evolutionary roadmap to producing them under the control of current computers. Norman Packard has worked in the areas of chaos, learning algorithms, predictive modeling of complex time series, statistical analysis of evolution, artificial life, and complex adaptive systems. Norman holds a BA from Reed College (1976) and a PhD in physics from University of California at Santa Cruz (1983). After post-docs at IHES (Bures-sur-Yvette) and IAS (Princeton), he joined the physics department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1987, where he became an associate professor before leaving to become a co-founder of Prediction Company in 1991. Norman is currently working in a new scientific and business direction based on development of evolutionary chemistry in programmable microfluidic technology, and is co-founder of a newcompany, ProtoLife, which aims to develop these ideas in the private sector.
Life revolves around real-world information processing, but the gap between computers and living systems is still formidable. The European Commission has approved an Integrated Project PACE that will create the foundation for a new generation of embedded information technology using programmable, self-assembling artificial cells. Distributed intelligent technical systems with self-organizing and evolvable life-like properties are required both to make the next generation of self-repairing computer and robotics technology and to direct all kinds of production and remediation on the nanoscale. The integrated project PACE will focus on the IT potential of truly artificial cells: addressing both the technical opportunities of programmable artificial cells and an evolutionary roadmap to producing them under the control of current computers. Such artificial cells will be useful because of their distinctness from, rather than their similarity to current biology. A consortium of some 13 partners and two cooperating groups from eight European countries, including Switzerland and Lithuania, and several USA organizations will pioneer this new approach under the IST-FET section of the EU 6th Framework Program (FP6).
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