National Institute for Modeling Biological Systems (NIMBioS)

A typology of rules for knowledge exchange in higher-order interactions Author summary Learning from each other is important to humans and other animals as it provides safe or quick ways to gather information about the world around you. Because of this ‘social learning’, ...

A new paper in @plos.org Complex Systems from my time at @nimbios.bsky.social with Nina Fefferman.
We set out some ways of classifying rules for social learning and knowledge exchange in higher-order networks.
doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Flyer with words: Social media has been undergoing rapid shifts, with many new platforms and changes in communities. To better understand this effect on NIMBioS, we did a social media audit, examining NIMBioS’ engagement and reach on our current platforms and comparing with those of institutions working in similar spaces. There is a great deal of variation across platforms and institutions in activity. Each platform has its own culture and need to handle responses. We cannot simply blast the same information to all the platforms at once, as they differ in character limits, approaches to linking out, and how focused they are on images versus text, so each platform we use requires additional staff work. To better focus our communications efforts and reach the audiences most engaged with NIMBioS, we’ve decided to focus on our website (https://www.nimbios.org/latestnews/), mailing list (https://listserv.utk.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NIMBIOS&A=1), Instagram (@nimbiosscience), and LinkedIn (National Institute for Modeling Biological Systems) These platforms have seen the most engagement and interactions for us and for related organizations in recent months, and we believe focusing here will allow us to create better content, post more consistently, and engage more meaningfully with our audience. We are not deleting our accounts on other platforms, but we wanted to let our community know that for most up to date info on activities at NIMBioS, you should turn to the following places: Web: www.nimbios.org Mailing list: https://listserv.utk.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NIMBIOS&A=1 Instagram: @nimbiosscience LinkedIn: National Institute for Modeling Biological Systems

We're Streamlining Our Social Media 💡

Graphic of text that says 'NIMBioS Welcomes Interim Director', with the NIMBioS logo above.

We’re excited to welcome Brian O’Meara as interim director of NIMBioS and we thank Nina Fefferman for her impactful leadership. As we plan for the future, we welcome your ideas at contact@nimbios.org. Full announcement here: www.nimbios.org/nimbios-welc...

NIMBioS, @nsfappexcenter.bsky.social, and the UT Math Department are co-hosting a talk at UT by Vishwanath Varma from the Max Planck Institute.

Join us on Monday, July 14 at 3 PM (4th floor, Ayres Hall)!

Join us this August at the 2025 ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining for "CausalBench: Streamlining Causal Learning Research", the 2nd NSF APPEX Tutorial! ⭐

Please stay tuned. Details to be announced soon!

Don’t forget that you can revisit our past talks on our YouTube playlist, where Morsels continue to reach new audiences well after the live talk. But there’s nothing quite like being there live with a curious crowd!

YouTube Playlist: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Please also help us spread the word! 📣 Share this opportunity with colleagues, departments, students, and anyone who loves engaging conversations about modeling, biology, and beyond. Know someone who’d be a great speaker? Nominate them by emailing us at contact@nimbios.org.

If you’re interested in presenting, we’d love to hear from you! Submit an application here. Time slots are filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so don’t wait!

Application: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Can you believe we’re already halfway through 2025? Time really does fly when we’re having fun, especially when we’re discussing mathematical biology and modeling through our Morsels from Numbers and Nature series! ⭐ Interested in presenting? Keep reading! 👇

We're excited to share that the National Institute for Modeling Biological Systems (NIMBioS) is once again hosting the 2025 EDGE Summer Program this June! We’re honored to host this impactful program and look forward to a summer filled with learning and connection.

We are excited to spotlight a recent publication by Dr. Nina Fefferman and Dr. Maggie Sullens titled "Budget Allocation and Illegal Fishing: A Game Theoretic Approach."

Congratulations on this wonderful contribution to the field of conservation science! aimspress.com/article/doi/...

This research is key to understanding how ocean ecosystems function and how environmental changes impact marine life.

By analyzing water samples from coastal and open ocean sites, the team aims to quantify this viral consumption and develop mathematical food web models to better understand viral dynamics on large scales in the ocean.

This research investigates how these viruses, which infect microscopic life, are consumed by protist grazers in a process known as "virovory."

Dr. David Talmy, NIMBioS Affiliate and Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Tennessee, is leading an exciting project to explore the role of viruses in ocean food webs! @dtalmy.bsky.social

Imagine smaller, more efficient air filters for hospitals, homes, or even your office—designed with the same principles that marine organisms use to capture their food!

This research helps protect biodiversity, support climate action, and can lead to innovations that benefit us all.

By understanding how filter feeders manipulate water to capture plankton, we can improve filtration systems in biomedical, industrial, and commercial applications.

By understanding these interactions, we can better protect marine communities, especially as coral reefs face devastating effects of ocean warming.

But the impact doesn't stop there! The insights from this research could have major implications beyond the ocean, too.

Why This Research Matters 🌍💡

Plankton may be small, but they are the backbone of marine ecosystems! Dr. Christopher Strickland and his team are working to better understand how plankton interact with filter feeders like corals and jellyfish.

We're excited to highlight another project here at NIMBioS — Dr. Maggie Sullens’ dissertation chapter, which explores how the collapse of a local fishing industry impacts the mental health of the community that depends on it. Learn more: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

STEM grad students: Apply your skills to real-world pandemic research this summer with NSF APPEX! Remote, paid, multidisciplinary internship. Modeling, AI, public health & more.
🔗 appex.org/openpositions/

Dr. Strickland and his team are developing models to better understand plankton behavior and their interactions with marine filter feeders like corals and jellyfish. The work sheds light on ocean ecosystems and reef conservation. The team recently conducted field research in Key Largo. Stay tuned!

This is a cassiopea (upside-down jellyfish). Here you can see it going for a swim before settling back down to its upside-down position on the floor.
Our NSF project combines math and science to study how filter feeders use the water around them to capture prey! I took this video earlier this week.

Ever wonder what a mangrove forest looks like underwater? Check it out! It's remarkably beautiful and a bit weird... I took this footage during our research meeting on March 16 where we are discussing ways to apply mathematical methods to better understand the fluid dynamics of filter feeders!

Diving with seafans

On the intersection of math and science: understanding how different filter feeders geometries (e.g. seafans) have adapted to their environment in the ocean! The left image is from our dive two days ago.

🎉 Happy Pi Day from the European Mathematical Society!

Today, we celebrate π (Pi) – a number that appears everywhere, from geometry to physics! How many digits can you recall?

We are excited to invite Dr. Cara Sulyok, along with her students Priscilla Doran, Natsuka Hayashida, Kristen Joyner, and Grace Moberg, for our March Morsel. This research was conducted as part of the 2024 Summer@ICERM Program at Brown University!

Whether it's archiving thousands of plant specimens, running epidemic simulations, or analyzing birdsong data, Rocky is at the heart of it all.

Stay tuned to learn more about these exciting projects in our upcoming posts!

Rocky is our high-performance computing cluster designed to handle complex, compute-heavy, and big data projects for quantitative life sciences. With specialized nodes, robust storage, and virtual hosting capabilities, Rocky helps streamline research and makes computational studies more accessible.

Since the spring of 2021, NIMBioS has secured over $8.5 million in new funding, building on the many ongoing multi-year projects already funded before 2021. This impressive growth does not include the $18 million brought in by
@nsfappexcenter.bsky.social, our sister institute!