SMB - Society for Mathematical Biology

I am happy to announce that the Midwest Mathematical Biology Seminar will be returning for the Fall 2025 semester. Our talks will be held on Tuesdays at 11am US/Canada Eastern time (10am Central time).

Please see the link below for more information.

sites.google.com/view/midwest...

Human interpretable grammar encodes multicellular systems biology models to democratize virtual cell laboratories We developed a plain text modeling language—a cell behavior hypothesis grammar—to easily build virtual cell models and connect them to data, helping scientists to unlock the hidden dynamics of tissues...

Really excited to share our new @cellpress.bsky.social Cell paper with @fertiglab.bsky.social and colleagues. 1/n

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

@jktgfoundation.bsky.social @itcrtraining.bsky.social @smbmathbiology.bsky.social #mathbio #mathonco @mathonco.bsky.social @deniswirtz.bsky.social

figure 1 from https://doi.org/10.1086/737588 describing (a) our conceptualisation of an evolutionary transition in individuality, (b) an interpretation of the traits that we consider in our mathematical model, and (c) a graphical representation of the population dynamics in the model.

Interested in host-symbiont interdependence, eukaryogenesis, and evolutionary transitions in individuality? my first paper just came out! With @gokhalecs.bsky.social and Pete Czuppon, we study when & how individuality emerges in a host-endosymbiont collective doi.org/10.1086/737588 a short thread🧵:

💥 Excited to introduce Bacformer 🦠 - the first foundation model for bacterial genomics. Bacformer represents genomes as sequences of ordered proteins, learning the “grammar” of how genes are arranged, interact and evolve.

Preprint 📝: biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧵 1/n

Global mentors joining the symposium.

EMBO is joining to talk about funding opportunities.

Students and researchers from broad biology or doing interdisciplinary research are welcome to apply. opportunity for Oral presentation, Global networking, Get certified and gain international visibility. Please share with your colleagues and students. Apply here - https://forms.gle/sLDerCLpWPGNnjcFA

Applications open for RCGS 2025, to empower young researchers globally.

Joined/supported by EMBO Euraxess, INYAS and mentors from Johns Hopkins, UCLA, Imperial, Cornell, more.

Oral presentation, networking, Certificates. Open to Master, PhD, Postdoc.
Apply forms.gle/sLDerCLpWPGN...
Ps share 🙏🏼

Final plenary from Susanna Manrubia at #SMB2025 is another phenomenal plenary talk. Building critical concepts through historical storytelling - starting with Lewis Carroll.

TLDR; genotype space is massive! Astronomically large redundancy between genotype and phenotype.

Holy Crow - and now there's like experiments that explore how evolution under temperature operates in bacteriophage. Very nice.
"Hierarchical genotype networks and incipient ecological speciation in Qβ phage quasispecies"
arxiv.org/pdf/2411.07110

I have my reading for the flight home #SMB2025 ;)

Mutational landscape to go from one word to another one with mutations, insertions and inversions.

And ending with the Cree language was such a beautiful and meaningful touch - honoring the language of many First Nations peoples and connecting science with culture. #SMB2025

Gave a talk about about this recentally published paper at #SMB2025 on the how and when the tempo and mode of environmental fluctuations impact population growth

smb.org/news/13519509

Couldn't leave Canada without breakfast poutine. Some scattered thoughts and Takeaways from #SMB2025...

I had a super fun week, so many conversations, short and long, with science friends old and new.

Thanks for the great science and great company. Next year will be time to swap the poutine for pilsner and I'll hope to see you in Graz! #SMB2025

Had a GREAT time at #SMB2025. Very well organized (thank s Jay Newby & Hao Wang!) in the lovely city of Edmonton. Heard lots of great talks, had numerous fun convesations, & learnt so much. Highly recommend joining @smbmathbiology.bsky.social & atttending their meetings!

smb.org/Annual-SMB-M...

I was 1 of 2 scheduled speakers in the last contributed talk session at #SMB2025 & the other didn't show. I'm thankful for the 7 engaged audience members consisting of 3 strangers & 4 friends & for see you later hugs I got today. I love the math bio research community that spans the globe.

@mathcancer.bsky.social speaking in the last session on the last day of #SMB2025 - the room is full though so I know I'm not the only one excited ;)

My group was equally distributed among the first (Monday) and last (Friday) day at #SMB2025. But this just made sure we spent a fully lovely week in Edmonton.

Graduate student Brandon Imstepf is giving the last Sindi Lab related talk using ML to accelerate network transport models. :)

Out now @dev-journal.bsky.social

Transition paths across the epithelial-mesenchymal transition landscape are dictated by network logic

Through investigation into the role of logic in GRN models, we discovered that choice of logic (AND vs OR) profoundly impacts cell fate.

doi.org/10.1242/dev....

"Patients should be their own control"

- great & pithy takeaway from @sandyanderson.bsky.social in his talk on the adoption of adaptive therapies in the clinic #SMB2025 #MathOnco

Photo of Susan Manrubia presenting the first slide of her plenary talk at the SMB meeting (featuring a picture of Lewis Carroll).

Photo of slide explaining the doublets word game invented by Lewis Carroll.

Starting off the final afternoon of #SMB2025, Susanna Manrubia from Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (CSIC) is giving a plenary talk on "The challenge of scale in molecular adaptation: Myopic searches in hyperastronomical genotype networks".

Photo of Carolin Grumbach gicing an introduction to the talk.

Photo of a slide showing a cartoon of a deer population to serve as an exampls of a generic population.

Wrapping up the session, Carolin Grumbach from Osnabrück University is giving a talk titled
"Allee Pits in Metapopulations: When Increasing Dispersal Can Backfire."

#SMB2025

Slide presenting the key variables and a flow chart for the model from Yun Kang's talk.

Photo of Yun Kang presenting the introduction of her talk at the SMB session.

Now Yun Kang from Arizona State University is giving a talk on "Migration Dynamics and Collective Decision-Making in Social Insect Colonies".

#SMB2025

Mohit

Title slide

Metastasis:responsible for most of cancer deaths

Final #MathOnco keynote at #SMB2025 @smbmathbiology.bsky.social with Mohit K. Jolly taling about Epithelial to Messenchymal Plasticity (EMP). Great talk and of great importance not just for #metastasis (the context in which it is usually studied) but also #treatmentResistance

Mohit Jolly kicking off the last day of #SMB2025 presenting a compelling case for understanding EMT via gene exp "teams"

Ending with a heartfelt shoutout to the 'SMB team'

Q: Which is more important: the journey or the destination?
A: the company.

Public Science Engagement Using Social Media — Center for Wildlife Studies

Friends, I am offering a "Public Science Engagement Using Social Media" course through the Center for Wildlife Studies!

You can take it for graduate school course credit, continuing professional education credit, or just to learn a new skill!

www.centerforwildlifestudies.org/courses/p/pu...

Photo of Rachidi Salako providing an introduction to his talk at the SMB session.

Slide presenting background material on the SIS model foe infecrious disease transmission.

Next up, Rachidi Salako from UNLV is giving a talk titled "On a Cross-diffusive SIS Epidemic Model with Singular Sensitivity".

#SMB2025

Photo of Wenxiao Shwn providing an introduction to her talk in the session.

Slide from Wenxiao Chen's talk highlighting different kinds of nonlineairities in scalar reaction-diffusion equations.

Now I am sitting in on part two of this session, which is starting with a talk by Wenxian Shen from Auburn University on "Front Propagation Dynamics in Fisher KPP Equations on Unbounded Metric Graphs".

#SMB2025

Looking forward to the morning plenary from Mohit Kumar Jolly #SMB2025

Last day of a great meeting, it always feels like the last day of camp!!

Love this, accept "identity crisis" as an identity!!

I think a lot of us between fields/disciplines "am I really a <BLANK>"

Thanks to Mohit K Jolly for that piece of life wisdom as well as the science.

#SMB2025!!!

Photo of Moit Kumar Jolly presenting the Winfree Prize lecture.

Slide from Mohit Kumar Jolly's plenary lecture askinv the question if the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition is binary, featuring an image of the "what if I told you" meme from The Matrix.

Kicking off the last day of #SMB2025, Mohit Kumar Jolly from the Indian Institute of Science is giving the Arthur Winfree Prize lecture on "Dynamical modeling of cell-state transitions enabling cancer metastasis and therapy resistance".

Very excited for this--see you in Chicago next May!

Riley

Title slide

Riley Manning (now at @math.onco) showing her work at University of Minnesota modeling tumor-immune interactions in glioblastoma and how computational models #MathOnco can help us explore how different aspects of these interactions can explain different […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]