Biodiversity and Evolution-Support for U.S. Participants

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports junior U.S. researchers, allowing graduate students and those in early stages of their career to participate in the thematic semester on Biodiversity and Evolution that will be held at the Centre de Recherches Mathematiques (CRM) in Montreal during the second half of 2013. This is part of the more general program of the thematic year on Mathematics of Planet Earth (MPE2013). Five workshops are devoted to (i) random trees, which arise in a wide variety of biological application, (ii) modeling the complex evolutionary dynamics that have shaped the structure of contemporary biodiversity, (iii) models of DNA sequence evolution, (iv) coalescent theory and other genealogical processes, and (v) applications of evolutionary game theory. This grant will allow 25-30 young U.S. researchers to participate in this exciting program. Understanding the rise and decline of species in interaction with one another and with the environment, not to mention the astonishing variability within species, requires a combination of approaches from distinct scientific disciplines (genomics, ecology, economics, computational biology, mathematical modeling, statistical genetics and bioinformatics). The thematic semester on Biodiversity and Evolution that will be held at the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques (CRM) in Montreal August-November 2013 will have conferences featuring research on a wide variety of mathematical, statistical, and computational approaches. Participating in conferences will allow 25-30 young researchers to learn about fertile and important research directions, and to interact with the leading researchers in their field.