Mathematics of Planet Earth

The aim of this workshop is to bring experts in probability, information theory, and stochastic systems alongside experimental systems biologists to develop understanding of the principles underlying cellular signalling and decision-making, and to develop quantitative techniques to investigate those principles experimentally. Key topics to be addressed include:

1) New information theoretic approaches to sensing and signal transduction by cells with an emphasis on dynamic problems, including the quantification and statistical estimation of information in molecular biology.
2) Study of stochastic biochemical networks: new developments in Monte Carlo simulation methods, approximate analytical techniques, and the need for a more developed theory of stochastic chemical reaction networks.
3) Inferential methods for statistical modelling of time series data from single cells, including simulation-based methods, likelihood free inference, diffusion approximations, particle filtering techniques and reversible jump MCMC.
4) Cellular decision-making, both intracellular and intercellular: how to apply mathematics of decision theory to the biological context.
5) Design of signal transduction networks for use in synthetic biology, particularly when the cellular outcome is controlled in response to a changing environment.

• Invited speakers:
• Clive Bowsher, University of Bristol
• Kevin Burrage, University of Oxford
• Caroline Colijn, Imperial College, London
• Robert Endres, Imperial College, London
• Ramon Grima, University of Edinburgh
• Des Higham, Strathclyde University
• Martin Howard, John Innes Centre
• Nick Jones,  Imperial College, London
• Mustafa Khammash, ETH-Zurich
• Tetsuya Kobayashi, University of Tokyo
• Heinz Koeppl, ETH-Zurich
• Markus Kollmann, Universitat Duesseldorf
• Andre Levchenko, Johns Hopkins University
• Ilya Nemenman, Emory Unviersity
• Ted Perkins, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
• Hong Qian, University of Washington
• David Rand, University of Warwick
• Michael Stumpf, Imperial College, London
• Savas Tay, ETH-Zurich
• Peter Rein Ten Wolde AMOLF, Amsterdam
• Gasper Tkacik, IST Austria
• Lev Tsimring, University of California, San Diego
• Hans Westerhoff, University of Manchester
• Darren Wilkinson, Newcastle University
• Ruth Williams, University of California, San Diego
• Carsten Wiuf, University of Copenhagen