This workshop is, in part, a meeting of the Principal Investigators that have been funded by the Joint DMS/NIGMS Initiative to Support Research in the Area of Mathematical Biology. However, it also includes researchers who have not been supported by the program, but whose interests lie at the interface between the biological and mathematical sciences. The purpose of the meeting is to promote collaborations between the biology and mathematics communities, facilitating the advance of biological and biomedical research. Specific aims are to provide a forum for PIs to share experiences, exchange ideas, and explore new collaborations; to inform NSF and NIH program officials of opportunities and challenges in promoting scientific advances at the interface between biological and mathematical sciences, and establishing and sustaining successful collaborations between biologists and mathematicians/statisticians; and to identify "big" problems in biology that require innovative mathematical approaches. The workshop includes speakers covering a wide range of biological and mathematical research, as well as poster presentations, and will be held at the University of Maryland on April 26-27, 2010.
Two conferences have been organized with partial support from this workshop grant: 1) Frontiers in Mathematical Biology: NSF-NIH PIs Meeting, April 2010 2) Frontiers in Mathematical Biology: Young Investigators Workshop, February 2012 The "Frontiers in Mathematical Biology: NSF-NIH PIs Meeting 2010" was held in April 26-27, 2010. The workshop was attended by over 200 participants, including most of the PIs funded by the NSF-NIGMS program, leading researchers in the field, representatives from government agencies, postdocs, and graduate students. Partial travel support was provided to minorities, postdocs, and graduate students. The program included three keynote talks by Philip Maini (Oxford University), Bin Hu (University of California, Berkeley), and David Botstein (Princeton University). 12 PIs delivered invited talks. All projects were given the opportunity to present posters in a poster session that was held in the first day of the meeting. Six breakout sessions were held in the first day, in which the different groups were charged with questions provided by the NSF and the NIGMS. The conclusions of these discussions were presented on day two. The meeting ended with a panel of program managers from government agencies that provided information regarding BioMedical Math programs in their organizations. The "Frontiers in Mathematical Biology: Young Investigators Workshop" was held in February 29 – March 2, 2012. The conference was held in the Center for Scientific Computation and Mathematical Modeling (CSCAMM) a the University of Maryland, College Park. As a followup to the first conference, a young-investigators workshop was held in February 29 – March 2, 2012. The workshop primarily targeted researchers at an early stage of their career (graduate students, postdocs, and new assistant professors). It focused on recent developments in the area of mathematical biology. The workshop provided attendees with opportunities to present and discuss their research and future challenges. It also provided opportunities to discuss the challenges facing building a research career that crosses the disciplines of mathematics and biology.
