Essential mathematics for biological research

Teachers: Jorge Carneiro & Eleonora Tulumello – Gulbenkian Institute (IGC)

Jorge Carneiro is a theoretical biologist at the Gulbenkian Institute, where he coordinates the PhD Programme in Integrative Biology and Biomedicine. He studied biochemistry and immunology at the University of Porto, and did his PhD research on modelling the immune system at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. After a short postdoc in Bioinformatics and Theoretical Biology at the University of Utrecht, he became an independent scientist at the Gulbenkian Institute. He is interested in the dynamics of cells and cellular collectives that he tries to understand using mathematical modelling. Recently he became interest in the history of life on Earth. He understands the languages of cell biology, physiology, immunology, biophysics, bioimaging, mathematics, computer science and robotics, which has allowed him to collaborate and publish in these fields. He has trained graduate students in statistics, modelling and computational biology for over two decades.

Eleonora Tulumello is a postdoctoral fellow a LIP in Lisbon. She studied applied mathematics and got her PhD in Integrative Biology and Biomedicine at Gulbenkian Institute. She is broadly interested in complex systems and in emergent and collective behaviour. Her research interest span ecology to neuroscience, the immune system regulation and more recently public health. She aims to explore the potential of quantitative models in explaining and predicting phenomena, as well as the related epistemological foundations and limits.

Dates & time: 9th ( 9:30h-11:00h) and 12th, 19th November & 3rd, 10th & 17th December 2021 from 10:00-12:00

Location: Via zoom / Additional work on some practical excises will be required outside the scheduled sessions

Level: Beginners

Maximum nº participants: 20-25

The course is structured in two phases. In the first phase, we will recapitulate essential elements of algebra, geometry and calculus and will ask participants to develop quantitative skills using only “paper & pencil”.

In the second phase we will work out more advanced topics with the help of a computational tool to symbolic operations. The idea is to overcome the aversive reaction towards maths, formalisms and computation.

Researchers that conclude the course are expected to:

1. be able to progress on their own into more advanced mathematical topics necessary for their research;
2. be able to read and understand equations in an article instead of jumping to the discussion section or dropping the paper altogether;
3. be capable of dialoguing with colleagues who do research in mathematics, statistics, physics or computation and thus engage in interdisciplinary research.

Bring your questions, curiosities and needs

Bring articles or other materials that are important for your research and are based on mathematics that you are curious about or that you have trouble tackling. We will try to organise the second phase of the course to address those topics. Please provide the articles, materials or simply requests in the first week of the course, so that the second phase of the course can be tailored to your specific interests and needs.