SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZERS

P.S. Swain (McGill)
B.P. Ingalls (Waterloo)
M.C. Mackey (McGill)


SPEAKERS

Brian Ingalls (Waterloo)
Control theory analysis for systems biology

Mads Kaern (Ottawa)
Synthetic biology

Michael C. Mackey (McGill)
Modelling genetic networks in bacteria

Theodore J. Perkins (McGill)
Inferring genetic networks from time series data

Peter Swain (McGill)
Modelling stochastic gene expression


Thematic Semester on
Applied Dynamical Systems
June-December 2007

Biology is becoming a quantitative science. For example, new technologies allow the motion of individual proteins to be visualized in single cells and the expression levels of all genes in a genome to be measured simultaneously. Nevertheless, a traditional biology training does not give the mathematical tools required to analyse such data. Across the life sciences, there is a need for researchers who are familiar with both mathematics and biology. This minicourse will introduce the fundamentals of quantitative biology. Its goal will be to give sufficient background to enable mathematics students to start reading the scientific literature and to enable biology students to critique the assumptions behind some mathematical techniques. Students will be taught by experts in quantitative biology, all of whom have themselves moved their research from the physical to the biological sciences.

This minicourse will be followed by a workshop on Deconstructing Biochemical Networks (September 24-28, 2007).

Sponsored by: