Monday 10 November 2014

BioMaths Colloquium 2014/15

The BioMaths Colloquium Series 2014/15 has started!

We are excited and proud to have assembled now a great list of speakers for our first full series of the Swansea BioMaths Colloquium Series. The series started at the end of October (see below) and will feature a monthly Feiday afternoon seminar during term time between October 2014 and June 2015, for a total of eight speakers from the UK and abroad (calendar of talks here). 

All seminars will be held at 3pm in the Maths Department (seminar room 224, 2nd floor of the Talbot Building), unless otherwise noted, and will be followed by tea, coffee and biscuits to continue the discussions.

We started with a superb talk by Dr. Jonathan Potts, which generated many interesting questions and discussions:


Towards predictive models of animal movement and space use: a case study of multi-species bird flocks in Amazonia

Dr. Jonathan Potts


Photo by Billtacular: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/billysbirds/4808308451/sizes/l/
Abstract
Though the movement of inanimate objects can typically be described by well-known physical laws, our knowledge of what governs the movement of animals is comparatively very poor. This is not surprising.  There are myriad factors affecting animal movement, from their desire to eat, mate and avoid predation, to social interactions such as flocking and swarming, to physical limitations to movement. 
Disentangling these factors, and placing them into predictive models of animal movement, is a formidable challenge.  

In this talk, I will describe some techniques recently developed to help scientists begin to rise to this challenge.  Though the tools are general, I will demonstrate how they have been used to give insight into a particular study system: multi-species flocks of insectivorous birds in the Amazon rainforest.

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This week the series will continue with a talk by Dr. Gibin Powathil from Swansea University on "Computational and Mathematical Approaches in Cancer Modelling and Treatment Prediction" (Abstract here).

Hope to see many of you! 

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