It was this common language that brought together several disciplines at UA to draft a joint proposal leading to the award of a $500,000 five-year grant from the Robert S. Flinn Biomedical Research Enrichment Initiative.
The proposal, "Biomathematics and Dynamics Initiative," was the sole recipient of funding during this, the third year of competition for the Flinn Foundation's drive "to strengthen the development of scientific discovery in the basic life and biomedical sciences in Arizona."
The specific aims
of the winning initiative include:
- Promoting the application of mathematics to biological and biomedical
research;
- Creating a community of researchers involved in interdisciplinary research
from the areas of life and mathematical sciences;
- Increasing interaction between these disciplines through training of graduate,
postdoctoral, and undergraduate students and through workshops and seminars
taught by distinguished visitors;
- Developing courses and research programs that will provide computational,
biological and medical skills and experience needed to solve biomedical
research problems;
- Providing the opportunity for selected undergraduates to participate in
ongoing research.
Key participants in this initiative are from the areas of applied mathematics, molecular and cellular biology, ecology and evolutionary biology, medicine, engineering and physics and life sciences. For the first time, various components of biological and biomedical research involving mathematical modeling and data analysis will be effectively drawn together, Tabor said.
In practical applications, this type of biomathematical research has made inroads into areas such as studying the electrical activity of the brain, predicting the spread of contagious diseases and charting the properties of blood flow through capillaries, just to name a few.
Historically, the applications of mathematics in biological systems has often evaded credible mathematical modeling -- the act of trying to provide an accurate and quantitative description, Tabor said. To make this point, Tabor read the following quote from the text "From Clocks to Chaos, the Rhythms of Life," by Glass and Mackey:
Somehow a myth has arisen ... that detailed mathematical and theoretical analyses are not appropriate in biology. Certainly the mathematical training of most biologists and physicians is minimal. Yet if the complex dynamic phenomena that occur in the human body were to arise in some inanimate physical system -- let us say in a laser, or liquid helium, or a semiconductor - they would be subjected to the most sophisticated experimental and theoretical study.
As the UA's Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs catalog explains, the cardiac pacemaker required an extensive interdisciplinary approach: medicine defined the need, physiological sciences explained the underlying mechanisms, applied mathematics formulated the theory of operation and bioengineering provided methodologies for construction.
The Applied Mathematics
Program "will provide the intellectual and administrative home" for the
group initiative, which will get under way this spring, Tabor said. And
unlike many applied mathematics programs that are primarily linked to physical
sciences, the UA's program also has a strong biological tradition.