The keynote speaker, Professor Peter Fromherz, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry and president of the German Biophysical Society, set the theme for the workshop. Biologists solve problems in real biological systems, but physics looks for effects and principles.
Biologists joke that physicists are always trying to re-invent the wheel.
And physicists often say that biologists get bogged down in the detail of special cases. The culture clash is not the only problem. The difficulties of finding funding for, and eventually publishing, interdisciplinary research in physics and biology are well known. Nevertheless, few of those who attended the workshop would dispute that the rewards are potentially great. The 'wish lists' of science problems needing solutions discussed by speakers on the second day of the conference served to highlight the range of potential breakthroughs that could result from encouraging a real interdisciplinary meeting of the minds.