Mathematical Modeling in Life Sciences

4.0 credits

This course is aimed at building problem-solving ability in students through the development of mathematical models for certain real-life situations in the biological sciences. Models treated cover a variety of phenomena both discrete and continuous, linear and non-linear, deterministic and stochastic. Some topics that might be treated are Leslie Matrices in Demographics, Exponential and Logistic growth, Gompertz growth in tumors, Hardy-Weinberg Law in population genetics, Lotka-Volterra predator-prey systems, principle of competitive exclusion, the Kermack-McKendrick model of epidemics (and variants), Markov chain models (with the requisite intro to probability) and the stochastic pure birth process and epidemic models.