How do living organisms reliably build complex structures from single cells, despite the variability of their components and environments? What determines the emergence of organized patterns, the timing of developmental transitions, or the reproducibility of shape across individuals and species? While genetics has revealed many of the molecular players involved, the fundamental principles that govern the transformation from cell to tissue to organism remain elusive. Developmental systems exhibit remarkable coordination across scales—from gene expression to mechanical forces to tissue geometry—but how these levels interact to produce robust morphogenesis is still not well understood.

This program will bring together experimentalists and theoreticians to work towards uncovering unifying rules of development and building bridges between distinct biological systems. Central topics include how geometry and mechanical feedback influence growth and differentiation; how cell identities emerge from high-dimensional gene expression landscapes; and how large-scale coordination is achieved in development, regeneration, and repair. By comparing independently evolved systems across the animal and plant kingdoms, this program seeks to uncover shared strategies in developmental biology and foster interdisciplinary collaboration.

The program will be complemented by the QBio Summer Research Course for graduate students and postdocs, training the next generation of scientists in cutting-edge tools and concepts in quantitative developmental biology.