Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Diverse mathematical biology

The last day for registration for the 5th Swedish Math-Biology Meeting is today. The meeting will take place in the first week in December.

What I think is cool when you look at the programme  is the diversity of subjects that will be talked about. The list includes everything from 'in-silico ecology and 'neural fields'', through 'fish stocks' and 'fossil dating' back to 'food webs', 'collective decision-making' and 'human fingers'. There is so much variety in how mathematics can be used to study biology.

Being optimistic, I should talk about the common language of mathematics linking all these diverse subjects together. And to some degree this is true. There are common processes in all these parts of biology that are captured by models. It is fun seeing how your favourite model can be used in a completely different way.

Being realistic, however, I know there are going to be a lot of confused (or sometimes sleepy) looks on our faces as we try (or fail) to understand what each other are doing. But that should never stop us from trying. See you in December.

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