The vast majority of natural processes take place out of equilibrium. In particular, biological systems rarely ever follow an equilibrium dynamics. This course covers the fundamental concepts of non-equilibrium physics. Many examples will be drawn from current topics in quantitative biology.

Topics include

• phenomenology of non-equilibrium physics: from hopping models to surface growth
• describing non-equilibrium dynamics: stochastic calculus
• the second law of thermodynamics as an equality: the Jarzynski equality
• dynamics of macromolecules, gene transcription and translation, kinetic proofreading