Advancing physical virology through multiscale approaches—Insights from the 2025 FEBS | EMBO lecture course ‘Physical Virology: across length scales’

Viruses represent a major threat to human health, while simultaneously exhibiting great potential in a wide range of applications, from virus-inspired devices to therapeutic delivery agents. Addressing virus-related questions from an interdisciplinary standpoint promises to open new avenues, both in the fight against viral diseases and in the exploitation of viral structures to advance technology. This has stimulated the development of 'physical virology', a growing research field gathering researchers from various scientific disciplines with a common interest in viruses. The FEBS|EMBO Lecture course on Physical Virology brought together top researchers working with viruses to inspire and further educate a new generation of transdisciplinary virus-oriented scientists and to cement the growing physical virology community.