Presenter: Dr. Gary An, M.D., Professor of Surgery, Department of Surgery, The University of Chicago Medicine & Senior Fellow in the Computation Institute, University of Chicago, IL
Title: Agent-based models, high-performance computing and biology as parameter space: Pathways for Translational Research and Precision Medicine
Abstract: Agent-based models are increasingly used for the computational representation of biological systems, most often as interacting aggregations of different types of cells. However, existing approaches to evaluating and using computer simulation/mathematical modeling may not be suited for their application to biology. This talk will present the argument that the key to biology is its ability to generate heterogeneity at the system level from a shared, common functional structure, manifesting as biological objects’ existence as parameter spaces of conserved functional forms, and that high-performance computing implementations of ABMs can be used a proxy systems to characterize the dynamic extent, or “behavior space,” of biological behavior. This concept of biological systems and the associated use of computational proxy models offers the promise of addressing several major challenges facing bioscience today: 1) The Crisis of Reproducibility, where experimental and clinical studies cannot be replicated, 2) the Translational Dilemma, which is the gap between the bench and the bedside, 3) and Precision Medicine, which should mean the right drug for the right patient at the right time.
Date: Monday, March 15, 2017
Time: 11:00 am
Place: 195 Farmington Avenue, 3rd Floor Conference Room U3071 A/B
Host: Reinhard Laubenbacher, Ph.D.
For more information, contact: Jane Tran Sills/Center for Quantitative Medicine at 860-679-4799/transills@uchc.edu