Thomas Speller discussed a combination of shape grammars and cellular automata. Shape grammars are apparently specifications of 2- or 3-dimensional forms, and are commonly used used in architectural schools. I wasn't familiar with the concept of shape grammars, but they appear to be a natural way to symbolically specify shapes.
He is interested in a domain study of graphene, a common structure in all biotic systems and many inanimate ones, which is becoming a popular subject of study among condensed matter physicists. He was generating shape grammars for graphene by using cellular automata to model the possible transitions between states.
He showed comparisons of different the results from different CAs pre-selected to model different physics processes, and showed that in each one, graphene-like structures were created. The difficulty in translating these processes to reality appears to be limiting the number of atoms that combine into separate aggregations before bonding with each other.
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