The signal is the noise: seeking physical origins of fluctuation in organism-scale behaviour @FOMarchive

Uploaded December 2014 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago

Programme leader Tom Shimizu tells us about his new FOM programme, named 'The signal is the noise: seeking physical origins of fluctuation in organism-scale behaviour'.

This 'Vrije Programma' was awarded funding in November 2014.

In November 2014 the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) awarded a total of 12 million Euros to six new research programmes. The research groups will work in areas where Dutch physics has a superb international record and there is a clear scientific and societal interest. This varies from researching fundamental questions about the universe that have not been answered by the standard model, up to research into variable behaviour of multi-cellular organisms at the level of individual cells.

For more information, please see http://www.fom.nl and http://www.fom.nl/live/english/research/research_programmes/free_programmes/artikel.pag?objectnumber=280300

The signal is the noise: seeking physical origins of fluctuation in organism-scale behaviour

Particle and astroparticle physics at FOM-Nikhef

$What physicists do with light: Kobus Kuipers In the FOM Annual Report 2014 physicists tell us about their research into light. You can read the interviews here (in Dutch): http://www.fom.nl/live/overfom/jaarverslagen/artikel.pag?objectnumber=292431&referpagina=14197 Who? Kobus Kuipers leads the Center for Nanophotonics at FOM institute AMOLF. He has previously worked at the MESA+ institute for nanotechnology (University of Twente). Kuipers is professor at the Utrecht University and international partner investigator of the Australian Research Center CUDOS. In 2015, he was appointed chair of the International Year of Light in the Netherlands. Nanophotonics In recent years nanophotonics has become a vibrant field of research, as scientists and engineers master the flow of light at length scales far below the optical wavelength, largely surpassing the classical limits imposed by diffraction. Using metallic and dielectric nanostructures precisely sculpted into 2D and 3D nano-architectures, light can be scattered, refracted, confined, filtered, and processed in fascinating new ways. This is impossible to achieve with natural materials and in conventional geometries. Control over light at the nanoscale has not only unveiled a plethora of new phenomena, but has also led to a variety of important applications. FOM institute AMOLF has been active in this new research field from its very beginning, and has helped shape it over the years. Currently, over fifty PhD students, postdocs and master students are active in AMOLF’s Center for Nanophotonics, working on a broad range of nanophotonics topics. Transcript: I am Kobus Kuipers, a nano-photonic researcher. I want to capture and mould light with nanostructures. My fascination with light and where it started.. The honest answer is, I dont really know, but apparently at the age of seven I wondered whether I could capture light in a bottle by putting mirrors on the inside of the bottle and then one on top. I let light shine in then closed it to see what happened. To be honest, I cant remember that. I dont know if my parents made it up or if it was true. What happened concretely is that we have a very special microscope, with which we can shine light at very short wavelengths and make it visible. Normal optical microscopes are limited by the wavelength of light, so you cant see details smaller than 500 nanometres. Our microscope can see things much smaller than that. So we study how light moves through structures. We can make that visible. Every now and then we find something that is new. Something people havent thought about before and we see a certain light phenomenon in a tiny nanostructure. We first ask if its real and then we discover it is. And then we ask how its possible. if thats the case, what are the subsequent questions. Can we use it? Or can we make light to do even crazier things? Then the research continues. We also cooperate with industry. The nice thing about nano-photonics is, we dont know everything, but its fairly clear about several elements that they will be useful. For example in more efficient light sources; better solar cells. The most exciting thing about the discipline is that you both can still be fundamentally surprised in your lab but also you can quickly ask if something is useful, for a better bio-sensor or whatever. The Year of Light is an initiative of the European Physical Society. That started lobbying and via, first, support from UNESCO for the year, it was eventually endorsed by the United Nations. What I hope of the Year of Light is that people move on from admiration and fascination for a light phenomenon, and that we can use it somehow to show people how useful light can be and how technically relevant it is in todays society. The whole Internet works with light. Light can be a solution to our energy problems. There are all kinds of ways that light is useful and somehow we have to use that to generate more interest in light technology and ideally in light science.$

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FOM archive |

The signal is the noise: seeking physical origins of fluctuation in organism-scale behaviour