Quantitative Approaches to Biological Problems

Catalog description

This course serves as an introduction to the use of mathematical, statistical and computational models and tools for understanding biology at the molecular, population, ecological and evolutionary scales. We will use discrete and continuous mathematics to model disease spread, ecological competition and biochemical systems. We explore the effect of random events in biochemistry and learn how to model such randomness in a statistical framework. We will also use computation tools to analyze genetic data and write a short computer program that simulates the change in allele frequencies in a population in time due to random effects. All course topics will involve hands-on computational exercises, but no prior experience in these tools and methods is expected.