About the Workshop
This Workshop will provide an opportunity for graduate and undergraduate students, as well as early-career and experienced mathematical biologists and theoretical biologists, to learn first-hand researchers’ innovative techniques and new perspectives on advanced topics that involve the modeling, analysis, and simulation of problems and questions emerging in modern studies of spatial dynamics in biological systems.
Students and young researchers from institutions in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Utah (SIAM Northern States Section) will have a significant stage for networking, communication, and potential collaboration among mathematical biologists interested in the topic of modeling, analysis, and simulation of stochastic and spatial dynamical processes in Biology.
Funding
The Workshop will be made possible thanks to the generous support of Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Utah State University and the National Science Foundation.
Schedule
Friday, April 14
| Time | Speaker | Description | ECC Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3:00 p.m. | John Stevens | Welcome | 201/203 |
| 3:15 p.m. | Sean Lawley | Modeling, simulating, and analyzing systems involving both stochasticity and space remain persistent challenges in mathematical biology. In this talk, we will walk through some diverse applications (including intracellular signaling, chemoreception, ovarian aging, and epidemics on networks) to show how extreme value theory, homogenization methods, and asymptotic analysis can give insight into stochastic spatial models. We aim to show how these theoretical tools can sometimes simplify mathematical analysis and identify the relevant (and irrelevant) features of biological systems. We will also discuss some open questions and avenues for future research. | 201/203 |
| 4:00 p.m. | Break | Hallway | |
| 4:15 p.m. | Scott McCalla |
Biological systems exhibit a variety of mechanisms for sensing and interacting with the world around them. The mathematical models used to represent these systems require nonlocal terms: the form of these nonlocal terms changes depending on the phenomenon being studied. We will walk through a variety of nonlocal models in different modeling contexts and discuss the various ways these systems are understood through both analytic and computational means. Our examples will be drawn from pattern forming systems ranging from particle aggregates to bacterial colonies.
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201/203
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| 5:00 p.m. | Social | Refreshments will be provided. | Hallway |
Saturday, April 15
| Time | Speaker | Description | ECC Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10:00 a.m. | Nancy Rodriguez | A successful wildlife management plan relies on two key factors: (1) the understanding of driving factors influencing the movement of social animals and (2) the understanding of what movement strategies are optimal depending on the environment. In this talk, I will first discuss results from work focused on determining how some social animals, such as Meerkats, move. We present a non-local reaction-advection-diffusion model along with an efficient numerical scheme that enables the incorporation of data. The second part of the talk will focus on how directed movement can help species overcome the strong Allee effect on both bounded and unbounded domains. I will also discuss the connection to optimal movement strategies in the context of the strong Allee effect. | 201/203 |
| 10:45 a.m. | Break | Hallway | |
| 11:00 a.m. | Erin Beckman | Many probability particle system models have been inspired by the dynamics of evolution and natural selection. We’ll discuss a branching-selection model motivated by ideas in population evolution where the underlying objects are a collection of interacting branching Brownian motions. Understanding the system will come in part from its connection to a nonlocal partial differential equation. The talk will focus on the intuition behind this connection and the main idea of how to turn this connection into a concrete result. We’ll also see how Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection arises in this context. | 201/203 |
| 11:45 a.m. | Wrap-Up | 201/203 |
If you have and questions contact Luis Gordillo by email to luis.gordillo@usu.edu