Professors, graduate students and researchers from across the country, gather at UW’s two week Rocky Mountain Mathematics Consortium to talk about the practical uses of math in predicting the spread of disease.
The program coordinators, professors Liu and Dillon from the UW’s mathematics department, hope to foster a system of understanding and mutual benefit between the mathematicians and biologists at this year’s conference.
“We have a good mix of students – biologists who want to learn more about math, and mathematicians who are interested in ecology and epidemiology,” says Michael Dillon in an interview for UW news, UW Department of Zoology and Physiology assistant professor. “Those two groups generally speak very different languages. By bringing them together, we hope they’ll learn how to communicate with one another.”
This year’s guest speakers come from: the University of Utah, Arizona State University, Purdue University, the University of Alabama, Oakland University, the University of California-Davis, Vanderbilt University and UW.
The conference has been held at UW summer school for the last 32 years, but this is the first year that it has focused on the spread of disease. The participants will be studying the spread of HIV, smallpox, yellow fever, SARS, white nose disease in bats, change in plant populations, infection rates in hospitals and the population changes of otters in California, according to the conference website. The research groups will present their discoveries to the group on the final day of the conference.
Professors Dillon and Liu from UW’s mathematics department predict increased used of the Cheyenne based super computer, the National Center for Atmospheric Research-Wyoming Supercomputing Center, to make mathematical models.
