February 23, 2018 (3:15 p.m. in Yost Hall 306)

Speaker: Professor Philip Gerlee, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

Abstract: Cancer is multi-scale disease, where changes at the smallest biological the scale – mutations in the DNA – manifest themselves at the level of the entire organism. In this talk I will outline an approach for understanding and ultimately controlling this process. In contrast to statistical and data-driven approaches mathematical oncology aims at building models from the bottom up, with the goal of understanding how properties at one biological scale (e.g. properties of cancer cells) influence the behavior at larger scales (e.g. the growth dynamics of the tumor). I will show this approach in the context of several different models, and also highlight the interplay between stochastic and deterministic modelling techniques.

Host: Dr. David Gurarie