Speech held during the Diderot Mathematical forum 2016: Biomedical Applications of Mathematics
Mathematics has become more and more important for various areas of the biological sciences due to the increasing availability of data and new data sources. In fact, the new investigation techniques and the need to organize and interpret an enormous amount of data and biological information deeply require the involvement of mathematics, including computational and statistical methods, both in biological and biomedical research and in the understanding of the medical problems (diagnosis, epidemiology, clinical medicine, …). Moreover, analysis and numerical simulation of mathematical models in the broader life sciences are emerging as a further investigative tool to be attached to other experimental or theoretical methods. Among the advantages that a mathematical model in biology or medicine could have we can remember: predict the evolution of a biological system under different conditions without redoing experiences or in situations which are not experimentally verifiable; quantitatively validate biological hypotheses; investigate properties of biological materials; suggest experiments; highlight links between various underlying biological entities through the analysis of experimental data and any underlying phenomena. Apart from this it must be remembered the contribution of mathematics to the development of the methods of investigation, for instance the methods of reconstruction and visualization of medical images for non-invasive techniques (CT, computerized tomography, or MRI, Magnetic Resonance.Here are some biomedical areas in which mathematics is nowadays widely used: Epidemiology and Clinical Research, Science omics (genomics, proteomics, pharmacogenomics, …), Mathematical modeling, Analysis of signals and biomedical images.
Physics & Mathematics in Biomedicine Consortium 