Mathematical Modeling of Biological Systems: Epidemiology, Pharmacology, and Clinical Application

Mathematical modeling is creating a mathematical representation of biological systems to gain a more quantitative insight into them. This course aims to offer a basic introduction to mathematical modeling to students interested in building an understanding of complex biological systems, the development of new treatments, and the prediction and simulation of the spread of infectious diseases through populations of animals to evaluate the effectiveness of intervention strategies. This course will be offered as a series of 5 sessions that will be 2-hour long (1 hour didactic and 1 hour laboratory work). Topics such as linear modeling and non-linear, pharmacokinetics (PK), epidemiological SIR (susceptible- infected-removed), and clinical use of models will be covered. A basic understanding of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) is a prerequisite for the course. Mathematical formulas will be minimally used. We will use WinSAAM (free download from winsaam.org) as the mathematical modeling environment for all the examples. 1 Credit Hour