Dream Fellowship: Simple Rules for Complex Systems: A shortcut on the path to the "in silico" sewage works.

Treating water and wastewater is central to a sustainable urban existence. Biology plays a key role the technologies we employ. However, the technologies we use have mostly been developed by a process of systematic trial and error. We have done this because they are incredibly complex. A single sewage works will contain more than 100 million billion bacteria comprising over 5000 species. That is, there are one million times more bacteria in a sewage works than there are stars in the galaxy. However, my colleagues and I believe that these treatment systems, like the galaxy, are governed by a handful of relatively simple rules that I believe can be determined from very simple principles. This fellowship will give me the opportunity to search for those rules. If my hunch is right, or even half right it will help us devise new ways to understand and predict how such systems work and enable to develop new ideas more quickly and more efficiently. This will not only help engineers make the very best use of the biological resources we have, it will also enable us to determine if some of the more ambitious ideas of biologists, synthetic biology, will ever find application in real open systems. This fellowship is a tremendous privilege. I hope to repay my debt to my colleagues and institution by spending some of my time thinking about how we create an environment where they too can do the most creative work possible. To do this I hope to look at what does and does not promote creativity in the university to use this information to make a creativity index to guide senior managers in the institution promote the best possible environment for exciting research.

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