Computational Morphodynamics may be defined as the study of the three-way interaction of physical, informational, and geometrical processes that influences the changing form, shape, and structure of living cells, tissues and organisms.

Some of the scientific questions we ask include:

• How is the morphology of organisms specified?
• How do mechanics, cell growth, and cell division affect morphology?
• How do biochemical and informational processes determine the major changes in the morphology of living organisms?
• What sort of physics is necessary to describe morphological development, and how does it feed back into the traditional biological and biochemical processes?
• Can we design and build synthetic biological systems to mimic various aspects of morphological development?
• What are the computational consequences of the macroscopic patterns of mammalian brain cell development?
• How do living morphodynamic systems evolve?
• How can we design self-fabricating molecular structures?
• What kinds of computational processes are best described using morphodynamics?
• How can we classify morphodynamic systems, up to Turing-computable diffeomorphisms?
• What sort of computational and mathematical resources are necessary to really understand morphology, morphological development, and morphological dynamics?

As scientists we seek to understand how morphology is specified and changes over time.

The term computational morphodynamics itself pays tribute to the diversity of disciplines the subject depends on: morphology, dynamics, and computation.

But more than that, it reminds us that the study of morphological development lies at the interface between biology, mathematics, computation, and engineering.

These disciplines give us the tools we need to actually do good science. Things like mechanics, growth, cell division, and biochemical and bio-mechanical regulation and feedback mechanisms certainly contribute to morphological dynamics. Understanding how each process works and how they relate to one another is far from trivial. We believe that by utilizing and integrating these multidisciplinary tools we can obtain more comprehensive and specific answers to the questions we pose.