Presentation

The Turing Centre for Living Systems (CENTURI) is an interdisciplinary project located in Marseille (France).

CENTURI aims at developing an integrated interdisciplinary community, to decipher the complexity of biological systemsthrough the understanding of how biological function emerges from the organization and dynamics of living systems.

The project federates 15 teaching and research institutes in biology, physics, mathematics, computer science, engineering and focuses on Research, Education and Engineering, 3 missions that hold interdisciplinary as their core principle.

The research and training programmes implemented under the auspices of CENTURI will foster new collaborations, will transform practices, will attract new talents and thereby contribute to making the Luminy campus a leading site for the interdisciplinary study of biological systems.

Governance

The Turing Centre is under the scientific direction of Pr. Thomas Lecuit, Research Director (IBDM). Five committees provide the executive director with expertise and advice on the distribution of the collaborative means and management of the whole project.

Why CENTURI ?

The name “CENTURI” has been chosen to the honor of Alan Turing, famous mathematician and computer scientist, but also pioneer in theoretical biology.

In 1952, he published a seminal paper entitled “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis”, a landmark in theoretical biology. It triggered a whole new field of mathematical enquiry into pattern formation, deciphering reaction-diffusion mechanisms and their consequences in dynamic living systems.