ICTS-PIMS-IISER Pune Program on Advances in Mathematical Biology

This is a joint program of ICTS with the Indian Institute for Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune and Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS), Canada. It aims to bring together leading mathematical biology researchers from the PIMS together with Indian scientists to deliver a series of pedagogical lectures on contemporary topics of interest. This program will explore three themes in particular:

 

Ecology, Epidemiology and Immunology. These lectures will explore mathematical modeling in Ecology (Mark Lewis), Immunology with reference to viral infections (Narendra Dixit and Daniel Coombs) and Epidemiology with an extension to Cholera models (Pauline van den Driessche).

Statistical Inference in Biological Systems. The methods of statistical inference, specialized to the study of biological problems, will be described. Essential and important techniques will be discussed in detail, with the context drawn from real-world ecological problems (Subhash Lele). A second set of lectures will describe the use of statistical inference in analyzing microarray data (Shailaja Deshmukh).

Collective Behavior in Cellular and Organismal Biology. These lectures will explore various models that have been developed to investigate multiscale issues that arise in biological systems with several interacting components. The role of individual-to-group behaviour in multi-cell system dynamics will be explored (Somdatta Sinha). Applications and case studies will be drawn from molecular motors, cargo delivery, spontaneous aggregation, social behaviour and cell migration in cancer (Leah Edelstein-Keshet). Another set of lectures will concentrate on the mathematics of active biological matter: the mechanics of cells and tissues and cellular information processing (Madan Rao).

Lectures are targeted at the Masters level, and will be especially useful at the early PhD and postdoctoral levels. An opening introductory session will rapidly cover basic topics that will be broadly useful in the later lectures. The lectures aim to intensively prepare young researchers planning to work in these and related areas in Mathematical Biology. 

Lecture sessions will be interwoven with periodic discussions designed to discuss recent research results of the speakers and other researchers working in related areas.