Dashboard

Welcome to the “Essential mathematics for biological research” course organised by Eleonora Tulumello and Jorge Carneiro for the CRG. The course is structured in two phases. In the first phase, we will recapitulate essential elements of algebra, geometry and calculus and will ask students 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. The idea is to overcome the aversive reaction towards maths, formalisms and computation. Researchers that participated in 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. The course will run from mid October until the end of November. Students will interact with Jorge during collective (in)formal classes on Tuesday and Friday mornings and during two additional hours ad libitum. In between, students will do practical exercises aiming at building and/or maintaining their “quantitative muscle”.

Modern Biology is becoming an increasingly quantitative discipline that requires a high degree of interdisciplinary interactions among scientists. Biologists usually face the most difficult part of interdisciplinary collaborations since the level of mathematics needed to develop a fruitful discussion is relatively high. The goal of this course is to introduce biologists to the most basic concepts of mathematics that are needed for the study of Calculus and to acquire a basic understanding of the language of mathematics to ease interdisciplinary communication. Teacher: Juanjo Fraire Zamora