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Joint Mathematics and Biology Colloquium

Date:
-
Location:
White Hall Classroom Building Room 110
Speaker(s) / Presenter(s):
Lou Gross, University of Tennesse Knoxville

Title: 

"Best" in a Biological Context: Optimization across the Biological Hierarchy

 

Abstract: 

Many central concepts in biology involve notions of what is "better" or "best" in the context of evolution, physiology, and behavior. Similarly, in many applied areas of the life sciences, we are concerned with developing a "best" method to carry out drug therapies, resource harvesting, pest management, and epidemic control. I will discuss, with audience participation, what it might mean to be "best" for several problems at different levels of the biological hierarchy. This includes being clear about differences between maximization and optimization, and taking account of constraints, historical and others, on biological systems.  Examples will incorporate notions of optimal control, emphasizing
spatial problems.   

There will be a reception at 3:30 in POT 745 before the talk. 


Brief Biography: 

Louis J. Gross is a James R. Cox and Alvin and Sally Beaman Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics and Director of The Institute for Environmental Modeling at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is also Director Emeritus of the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, a National Science Foundation-funded center to foster research and education at the interface between math and biology. He completed a B.S. degree in Mathematics at Drexel University and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at Cornell University, and has been a faculty member at UTK since 1979. His research focuses on applications of mathematics and computational methods in many areas of ecology, including disease ecology, landscape ecology, spatial control for natural resource management, photosynthetic dynamics, and the development of quantitative curricula for life science undergraduates. Among other activities he has served as Program Chair of the Ecological Society of America, as President of the Society for Mathematical Biology, President of the UTK Faculty Senate and as Chair of the National Research Council Committee on Education in Biocomplexity Research. He is the 2006 Distinguished Scientist awardee of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, is a Fellow of the American Association for  the Advancement of Science, and is co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Theoretical Ecology, published in 2012 by the University of California Press. Along with Erin Bodine and Suzanne Lenhart, he is co-author of the text Mathematics for the Life Sciences
published by Princeton University Press in 2014.  

 

This event is supported, in part by the College of Arts and Sciences