PIMS Mathematical Biology Summer Workshop at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada
From EESwiki
This year the Centre for Mathematical Biology at the University of Alberta has organized its sixth annual Summer School for Mathematical Biology. I found out about the course because I have been in touch with Dr. Mark Lewis, one of the instructors. Since I am planning to work in his lab for one year as a visiting student, he invited me to come to the summer school as well. The teachers for the summer school were the professors, assistant professors and postdocs in the Centre for Mathematical Biology. Furthermore there were a lot of graduate students volunteering to help with exercises and projects. The course is funded by the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS). PIMS provided money for accomodation, coffee breaks with delicious food, three dinners and part of the travel costs.
The course consisted of ten days of class with one free day in between. In the first week, we learned through lectures and exercises about difference equations, ordinary and partial differential equations, stochastic processes and parameter estimation. In computer labs in the afternoons, we applied the newly gained knowledge and learned how to use the computer algebra systems Maple and Matlab. I got a good introduction into both systems, which will allow me to work with Maple or Matlab for my Bachelor's thesis. Students at the LMU who have taken the classes „Mathematik für Biologen“ or „Evolutionary Ecology Modelling“ will encounter some familiar topics, but most of the mathematics covered in the workshop will be completely new for students with a biology background.
In the second week of the workshop, we started working on small projects in pairs. I chose a project about migration and habitat selection in beetles. Using the techniques learned in the first week, we built an ODE (ordinary differential equation) model for the biological system, and made simulations using Maple. We were supported by a postdoc and a PhD student, who helped us with the model selection and programming problems. On the last day of the course, all groups had to give a presentation about their projects. Most of the presentations were interesting and impressive because the participants had spent a lot of time and energy on their projects and used quite sophisticated mathematical methods. There were presentations about drugs, why we sleep, shell patterns in molluscs, a novel approach to curing cancer with macrophages, the spread of salmon escaping from farms, the evolution of cooperation and the placenta.
The atmosphere in the group was very good. All scientists in the Centre for Mathematical Biology were friendly, approachable and involved in interesting ongoing research. Some of them gave a short talk about one of their research projects, for example spatial ecology, cancer research or invasive species. All in all the summer school was a very inspiring experience for me and gave me a good overview of the field of mathematical biology.
