2019 Quantitative Biology (q-bio) Summer School at Rice University

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This award shall provide partial support for participants to a two-week q-bio Summer school in July 15-29, 2019 at Rice University. The abbreviation "q-bio" is derived from Quantitative Biology and it refers to combined biological and mathematical methods of obtaining insights into processes that underlie evolution and functioning of biological cells in health and disease. One such example is response of individual cells to stimuli such as viruses: Each cell responds in different ("noisy") way, but their interaction elicits coordinated immune response. Predicting this response requires advanced simulations and theory of chemical reactions. The purpose of this school activity is to encourage early career scientists to pursue quantitative systems biology and concurrently provide a forum for professional networking and the exchange of new results and ideas. The participants will be involved in research projects, some of which lead to scientific progress and publications. The Program Committee, including the members of Organizing Committee and ranking faculty, selects applicants for admission and decides about financial aid. Diversity of participants is strongly promoted.The summer school activities include two tracks: Cancer Dynamics and Evolution and Stochastic Cell Regulation. The topics shall cover stochasticity and cell-to-cell variability in the measurement and modeling of biochemical systems. Emphasis will be given to the effects that small numbers of important molecules (i.e. genes, RNA, and protein) have on the dynamics of living cells. The lectures will review experimental manifestations of stochastic effects in molecular biology, as can be measured using single-cell and single-molecule techniques. The lectures will discuss the most recent analytical and numerical methods that are used to model these systems and show how these methods can improve interpretation of experimental data. The lecture will discuss how different cellular mechanisms control and/or exploit randomness in order to survive in uncertain environments. Lectures will cover topics spanning many time- and length-scales, from the fundamental issues of cell proliferation and mutation dynamics, to molecular events affecting specific pathways in cells, to population genetics effects. This section of the summer school will include a number of instructor-suggested group projects, in which students will apply various numerical techniques to formulate, identify and solve stochastic models of cancer evolution. Students will then apply these tools to model experimental and clinical data. More information can be found at the qbSS website http://q-bio.org/wp/qbss/.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.