The science of living matter for tomorrow

The interface of physics and biology pro-vides a fruitful environment for generatingnew concepts and exciting ways forwardto understanding living matter. Examplesof successful studies include the estab-lishment and readout of morphogen gra-dients during development, signal pro-cessing in protein and genetic networks,the role of fluctuations in determining thefates of cells and tissues, and collectiveeffects in proteins and in tissues. It is nothard to envision that significant further ad-vances will translate to societal benefitsby initiating the development of new de-vices and strategies for curing disease.However, research at the interface posesvarious challenges, in particular for youngscientists, and current institutions arerarely designed to facilitate such scientificprograms. In this Letter, we propose aninternational initiative that addressesthese challenges through the establish-ment of a worldwide network of platformsfor cross-disciplinary training and incuba-tors for starting new collaborations.