Biological systems (BIO)
The main objective of this research pole is to mathematically describe, analyze and simulate complex biological systems. These systems contain mechanisms located at any level of organization (from genes to ecosystems) and cover any temporal or spatial scale (from local short-term events to the global evolutionary history of life).
Specific applications include:
- Mathematical modelling of infectious diseases
- Public Health
- Genome analysis
- Species coexistence
- Ecosystem stability and tipping points
- Global change biology
- Neural networks
Adopted techniques include mining of big data and machine-learning approaches, various types of modelling (from statistical and phenomenological to mechanistic dynamic modelling), and inference of biological mechanisms through model-data comparison.
Keywords: Theoretical biology, Ecology, Epidemiology, Evolution, Global change, Data mining, Mathematical modelling, Numeral simulation, Inference, Time series analysis, Stability analysis
Contact: Timoteo Carletti, Frederik de Laender and Nicolas Franco
Relevant references:
- Franco, N., Covid-19 Belgium: Extended SEIR-QD model with nursing homes and long-term scenarios-based forecasts, Epidemics Vol. 37 (2021), 100490.
- Franco, N., Coletti, P., Willem, L., Angeli, L., Lajot, A., Abrams, S., Beutels, P., Faes, C., Hens, N., Inferring age-specific differences in susceptibility to and infectiousness upon SARS-CoV-2 infection based on Belgian social contact data, PLoS Comput Biol 18(3) (2022), e1009965.
- De Laender, F., Carpentier, C., Carletti, T., Song, C., Rumschlag, S.L., Mahon, M.B., Simonin, M., Meszéna, G., Barabás, G., Mean species responses predict effects of environmental change on coexistence, Ecology Letters 26, 9 (2023).
- Zhao, Q., Van den Brink, P.J., Xu, Ch., Wang, Sh., Clark, A.T., Karakoç, C., Sugihara, G., Widdicombe, C.E., Atkinson, A., Matsuzaki, S.-I. S., Shinohara, R., He, Sh., Wang, Y.X.G., De Laender, F., Relationships of temperature and biodiversity with stability of natural aquatic food webs, Nature Communications 14 (2023).
- Carpentier, C., Barabás, G., Spaak, J.W., De Laender, F., Reinterpreting the relationship between number of species and number of links connects community structure and stability, Nature Ecology & Evolution, 5 (2021), 1102–1109.