The dynamics of biological systems is driven by interactions between many elements at a given level of biological organisation (e.g. molecular, cellular, organism), but also by the couplings that exist between said levels (e.g. from molecules to cells to populations). Such couplings are highly non-linear and make the analysis of complex biological systems extremely challenging . The remit of the Mathematical and Computational Biology is the development of new theory, models, techniques, and tools that are relevant to biologists and clinicians. For this purpose we use a plethora of mathematical techniques including stochastic multiscale models, dynamical systems theory, singular perturbation analysis, bifurcation analysis, morphometrics, dimensional reduction tools and efficient simulation methods, as well as statistics, machine learning or optimization. We tackle issues such as understanding how genetic variation leads to variation in the characteristics of organisms, the so-called genotype-phenotype map, the arising of such map in embryonic development, its influence in the direction of phenotypic evolution. We also formulate new models of virus evolution and therapies that account for intrinsic heterogeneity and noise, we study the design of new strategies to avoid drug resistance induced by cancer-cell heterogeneity and analyze the mechanisms of ageing. Our research is collaborative in nature and we make an effort to keep close collaborations with both biologists and medical practitioners.
GROUP LEADERS
Personal Website
Tomás Alarcon
ICREA – CRM
talarcon@crm.cat
I obtained my PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Barcelona in 2000. After that I spent many wonderful years working as a postdoc at the University of Oxford, UK (2001-2003), University College London, UK (2003-2006), and Imperial College London, UK (2006-2009). I briefly held a senior researcher and group leader position at BCAM, Bilbao, Spain (2009-2010), after which I moved the Centre Recerca Matematica where I lead the Cancer Modelling Group. I have also held visiting fellowships at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, IIMAS (UNAM, Mexico DF), OCCAM (University of Oxford, UK), the Mathematical Institute (University of Oxford, UK), and the Mathematical Biosciences Institute (Columbus, Ohio, USA). In October 2015, I was appointed to an ICREA Research Professorship at the Centre de Recerca Matematica.
Personal Website
Silvia Cuadrado
UAB – CRM
Associate professor (UAB) since 2010. PhD in Mathematics (2003, UAB), Research position at Utrecht University (2001). Évariste Galois prize from the SCM (1998). Board member of the European Society for Mathematical and Theoretical Biology (2018-2023). Coordinator of the Modelling Master for Science and Technology (UAB).
Personal Website
Gissell Estrada-Rodriguez
UPC – CRM
gissell.estrada@upc.edu
I’m currently an Assistant Professor at Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain. Previously, I was a postdoc at the University of Oxford working with Jose A. Carrillo as part of an ERC grant. Also, I was a postdoc at Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lion at Sorbonne Universite as part of a fellowship from Fondation Sciences Mathematiques de Paris (FSMP) where I worked under the supervision of Benoit Perthame and Luis Almeida for two years. I finished my PhD in 2019 in Edinburgh under the supervision of Heiko Gimperlein and Kevin Painter.
Personal Website
Josep Sardanyés
CRM
jsardanyes@crm.cat
I completed a BSc in Biology at University of Barcelona (2002) and went on to earn a Master and a PhD in Biomedicine (2009) at the Complex Systems Lab (CSL, Universitat Pompeu Fabra). During my PhD thesis I worked on dynamical systems and complexity in Biology. Upon obtaining my PhD degree, I moved to Valencia where I took up a postdoc position at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Plant Biology (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas-UPV). In 2011 I moved to The David J. Gladstone Institutes for a second postdoc (University of California San Francisco, USA), where I focused on the evolutionary dynamics of RNA virus. Then, I moved again to the CSL where I completed a third postdoc (2012-2016) working on cancer evolution, theoretical ecology and systems and synthetic biology. In 2017 I became a researcher at the CRM.
Ielyaas Cloete
Daria Stepanova
Oriol Llopis
EXTERNAL COLLABORATORS
CSIC Associated Unit (DySCoVir) between the I2SysBio and CRM
The I2SysBio and the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica (Mathematical Research Center) launch the associated unit Dynamic Systems and Computational Virology (DysCoVir) — News — DysCoVir website