CSSS 2008 Santa Fe-Projects & Working Groups

Potential Projects

Antagonistic interspecific interactions

After chatting with several people about host-parasite systems and hearing some of the comments at the icebreaker, I want to see if others are interested in potential projects in this area. As a way of getting some brain storming started, I’ve just typed up some topics (these include ideas I’ve heard from others here at Santa Fe) to see if there is critical mass and an interesting question.

Topics (no particular order)

• Impact of immune system on host-parasite (/pathogen) interaction
• Impact of heterogeneous hosts
• Infectious diseases: epidemic outbreaks vs. endemic steady states
• Direct vs. vector transmission of parasites/pathogens
• Non-genetic transmission of disease resistance
• Effects of pathogen competition on epidemic outbreaks
• Spatial heterogeneity of transmission of parasites

Interested? Please add ideas that you find interesting or would like to explore more (or just your name).

-Devin

Epidemiology in general. -Ruben

Biological Levels / Phenotypes Discussion

We have a number of folks here either interested in or studying biology at various levels. I am interested in talking about ways in which it makes sense integrate different levels of biological knowledge into a representation of a system. For example, how might microRNA predictions be combined with gene expression networks (or proteomics or SNPs) to lead to a phenotype.

I am also interested in questions of how phenotypes are defined. Within an organ state (e.g., disease or not) for example, a phenotype might be defined as a gene expression pattern, a growth rate, a panel of microsatellite lengths, or functionally by in vivo or ex vivo capabilities to self-renew, etc. If what we are trying to understand is a larger question of disease or functionality, which phenotypes are interesting and useful (and possible!) to use?

I think these questions can be approached from a variety of ways. Off the top of my head, perhaps multi-scaled modeling or examining the system as a multi-level evolutionary system... I'm sure there are many others.

If you are interested, add your name and we can set up a time / place to talk about these and related questions.

Something in Neuroscience

I (Nish) would really like to do some more intensive, deep research in Neuroscience (Computational being my perspective). While I am fascinated by neurological and behavioral diseases, I would be open to any kind of neuroscientific problem. Anyone else?

Asymetric co-evolution in space/time

I would be interested studing dynamic networks that have different rates and/or distributions. You could think of a ecological interaction example of parasites that are distributed by wind and have a lifspan of a few weeks, and plants that are spatially contstraint and have an annual lifespan. Or a social-ecological example of people managing a certain natural resource.

Dirk

Evolving skepticism

I'd like to do anything relating to the introduction of misinformation into a system, but one concrete suggestion is looking at how one might evolve a skeptical response to defend against being "defrauded" (this could be in a social science or biological system).

Abby

if you can't grow Collapse, you haven't explained it

Gared Diamond describes a five point framework for collapse of societies. These points are:

-resilience of the environment to human caused damage

-climate change

-hostile neighbours

-friendly neighbours

-society's response to its problems

My proposal is to test these points in an agent based setup. we could for example use the parameter sweep etc.

If you are interested, add your name and we can set up a time / place to talk about these and related questions.

Dirk

I am also very interested in this Richard

Could we adapt this and include an urban perspective? Flávia

Everybody needs his physicist. :-) - Ruben

Working Groups

Evolutionary Game Theory

A few of us were thinking that there wouldn't be enough time to discuss enough topics in EGT in a single tutorial, so I decided to post an offer for a working group that could meet fairly regularly to read and discuss papers from the field, suggest new topics, and possible projects. So far we've thought about looking at evolutionary branching models (in, say, a colony of yeast that produces an enzyme that can be shared by all individuals of the colony) and extending them from one population to two.

Please let me know if you'd be interested in joining. Feel free to add your name and topics you'd like to discuss.
—-Josh

Viral Modelling

I (Jeremie) propose to set up a workshop on viral modelling (biomathematics, epidemiology, virus kinetics, evolution, networks...). The idea would be that anyone could prepare a short and general introduction to its research area. Please let me know if you'd be interested in joining. Feel free to add your name and topics you'd like to discuss.

Let's make networks secure

I'm interested in making 'secure' networks with bound resources (like it is normal in reality). This is a very general questions and has many oppurtunities. For example: - I have an epidemic and not enough vaccine - how should be vaccinated, how not? - Terrorist try to smuggle a bomb into the land of Oz. Which flights between wich airports should be especially watched to minimize this risk? - How can we try to secure the internet with special anti-virus hubs? Is it possible to stop the epidemic of computer-viruses by special 'antibody' servers? This just came to my mind and if anybody has other good ideas or wants to comment this - please feel free.

- Ruben