3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

Introduction to physics-based and mathematical modeling approaches used to represent biological systems including molecular and cellular systems and multi-cellular or fluidic systems. Students will learn algorithms for implementing models computationally and perform implementations in MATLAB (python, c/c++ also allowed). We will discuss types of approximations made to develop useful models of complex biological systems, their foundations in statistical mechanics, theory, or empirical observations, and comparisons of model predictions with experiment. The course contains 5 major sections: 1) Thermodynamics and basic statistical mechanics 2) Dynamics of equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems, equations of motion 3) Parameter estimation, dimensionality reduction for model fitting and data analysis 4) Fluid Dynamics and continuum models 5) Additional topics: Membranes, Cytoskeletal assembly, Networks, Action potentials, Gene expression