Research Highlights
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Modeling the Prevention and Reversal of Type 2 Diabetes
February 2014A highlight of the August 2013 Workshop for Young Researchers in Mathematical Biology held at MBI was a presentation by Dr. Arthur Sherman of the National Institutes of Health, describing work with NIH post-doctoral fellow, Joon Ha, on modeling the disease process in type 2 diabetes (T2D). Diabetes is an unfortunate byproduct of the phenomenal success […]
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Mathematics and Cosmology
December 2013The subject of cosmology has progressed dramatically in the last 10-20 years. This is illustrated by, among other things, the Nobel prizes in 2006 (cosmic microwave background) and in 2011 (observations of supernovae). In particular, the observations of supernovae led to the unexpected conclusion that the uni- verse is expanding at an accelerated rate. As […]
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Stochastic Models of Disease Spread
August 2013At a yearlong program at MBI, mathematicians, engineers, and bioscientists discussed new ways of analyzing the effects of random events on the long term behavior of large biological systems. A particular topic of interest was the development of stochastic methods in the study of infectious diseases. Within an individual, disease development involves both the stochastic […]
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Homotopy Type Theory
August 2013During the academic year 2012-13, the School of Mathematics conducted a special program on a new approach to the foundations of mathematics entitled Univalent Foundations of Mathematics. The program was co-organized by Professor Vladimir Voevodsky of the School and Members Steve Awodey of Carnegie Mellon University and Thierry Coquand of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. […]
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Mathematics Enables Effective Screening of Recessive Genetic Disorders
August 2013Yaniv Erlich directs a human genetics lab at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). One of his research projects is to identify carriers of recessive genetic disorders that affect a large proportion of the Ashkenazi Jewish population. These genetic disorders are known to cause devastating diseases, such as […]
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The Importance of Chemotaxis to the Health of Coral Colonies
August 2013Chemotaxis is a mechanism by which organisms navigate their environment using chemical sensors. When mathematician Sasha Kiselev, University of Wisconsin, heard a lecture at the IMA by Jeffrey Weiss, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado, about broadcast spawning, when egg and sperm are released at separate locations are then brought […]
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Crystals in Number Theory
July 2013During the spring semester of 2013, the Institute for Computational and Experimental Mathematics hosted a special program devoted to common themes in automorphic forms, combinatorial representation theory and multiple Dirichlet series. A particular focus was placed on computer exploration and the joint development of the required computational tools within the open source mathematical system Sage. […]
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Disproof of Wall’s Conjecture
July 2013During the June 2012 AIM workshop, “Cohomology bounds and growth rates” a counterexample was found to a group theory conjecture formulated by G. E. Wall in 1961. A mathematical group is a set along with an operation that combines two elements to form a third element […]
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Distinguishing Knots
June 2013An old question in mathematics is: how can we distinguish between knots? If we imagine a knot tied out of a piece of rope, the most basic problem is to tell if the knot can be “undone” by moving the rope around without breaking it. Although it may be difficult to see immediately, the following […]
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Symplectic Dynamics
August 2012During the 2011-2012 academic year, the School of Mathematics held a special program on Symplectic Dynamics led by Helmut Hofer and John Mather. Symplectic Dynamics is an anticipated new field focusing on Hamiltonian systems using highly integrated ideas from the theory of dynamical systems and symplectic geometry. In recent years a number […]