Question: What distinguishes the living matter from the inanimate?
Hypothesis: Distinctive hallmarks of living things originate from basic physical principles of this non-equilibrium state of matter.
Goal: Construction of a unified framework or language to describe how living matter evolves and self-assembles into systems which are able to self-replicate, develop, process information, and learn.
Methods:Physical and mathematical approaches, specifically non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, information theory, graph theory, topology, and soft active matter theory.