The First IIAS-PKU Workshop ‘Strategies & Design Principles in Cellular Complex Systems’ was held in Jerusalem, Israel during March 23rd to 26th, 2014. This workshop is jointly organized by the Center for Quantitative Biology, Peking University (PKU) and Israel Institute for Advanced Studies, Hebrew University (HBU). Many professors from PKU and Israel attended the workshop, including Chao Tang, Yuhai Tu and Yiyan Huang from PKU, Uri Alon and Naama Barkai from Weizmann Institute, Michal Linial, Sigal Ben-Yehuda and Nir Friedman from HBU. Nine PKU students and tens of Israel students participated in the workshop.