NSF-Simons Southeast Center for Mathematics and Biology

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

This award promotes the mathematics of complex biosystems by establishing the NSF-Simons Southeast Center for Mathematics and Biology (SCMB) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The SCMB is a regional center with national impact whose defining mission is connecting mathematical theory with biosystems data. The core Center activity is catalyzing new research collaborations at the mathematics-biology interface with a collective focus on understanding emergent properties at critical genome-to-phenome junctures. This is complemented by a strong interdisciplinary training component, with an emphasis on enabling trainees to initiate new transdisciplinary collaborations as they progress in their research careers, and is supplemented by educational outreach and convening research activities. In these ways, SCMB is addressing the challenge of building research capacity at the mathematics-biology interface by driving discoveries that propel both fields forward into new territory. The NSF-Simons Southeast Center for Mathematics and Biology recognizes that diverse sources of data require diverse theoretical approaches and that novel data structures acquired from biological systems spur mathematical growth. Moreover, the Center has identified its fundamental challenge as developing mathematics-biology research collaborations that advance the frontiers of both disciplines. The Center is structured around a collection of seed projects defined by research questions of interest to both interdisciplinary mathematicians and biosystems experimentalists that address critical aspects of emergence between genetic information and phenotypic traits. Participating biosystems faculty have research interests ranging from molecular cell biology to behavioral dynamics, and they bring substantial quantitative modeling and computational analysis expertise to the Center. Participating mathematicians have prior interdisciplinary experience and many research interests in common, including foundational areas with considerable untapped potential in biosystems applications. By actively matching experimentalists and mathematicians, SCMB is catalyzing new mathematics-biology collaborations. These novel interdisciplinary teams will mentor trainees with an emphasis on building interactional expertise. Educational outreach will build workforce capacity by priming the mathematics-biology pipeline, and convening activities will establish a national center of gravity in the Southeast for the mathematics of complex biosystems. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.