On May 1st, 2024, Alex Stein of Queen Mary University London presented his work on mathematical analyses of cancer mutations before and after treatment. Alex started off by defining cancer as an evolutionary disease: during the aging process, healthy cells in the human body are continuously replaced by new cells. Some of the mutations will… Read more

On April 3, 2024, Lenore Pipes spoke on the computational methods that she has been developing during her postdoc for use on the massive environmental DNA (eDNA) datasets that are being produced. eDNA has applications spanning pathogen and disease monitoring, biodiversity assessments, counter-terrorism, climate change, community ecology analysis, and ancient DNA studies. Pipes defines eDNA… Read more

Baskett defines herself as a conservation scientist, which means that by definition, she does use-inspired basic research. This means that there is quest for fundamental understanding and consideration of use – in the case of her research, that use is conservation and restoration management. Combining basic and applied science presents a challenge. They contain different… Read more

For the second installment of MTPB’s software series, Ben Haller of Cornell University spoke about SLiM on March 13, 2024. Ben began by acknowledging the main contributors to the project besides himself. Philip Messer wrote the original SLiM, and Peter Ralph is a major contributor – however, Ben acknowledged that many others have also contributed… Read more

On February 28, 2024, Francois Bienvenu and Mia Miyagi presented on models that have been relevant to their respective research areas. Francois Bienvenu from Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Besançon began with his presentation: “Where do phylogenetic trees come from?” Starting by drawing a basic phylogenetic tree, Bienvenu noted that it is a good structure to… Read more

On February 20, 2024, John Wakeley and Sally Otto spoke with Montgomery Slatkin, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, on how the field of modeling has developed over the years. The following is a summary of their conversation, minimally paraphrased and edited for clarity. Otto: When was… Read more

On January 30, 2024, four panelists from three institutions sat down with Ailene MacPherson to talk about the unique paths of their careers as interdisciplinary researchers. The following is a summary of their conversation, paraphrased and edited for clarity. Give a brief description of your career path, and how you ended up in your department.… Read more