Prof. Avner Friedman, a Fellow of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences，from the Ohio State University gave the lecture named “what is mathematical biology and how useful is it?” at AMSS on Oct.20, 2011. More than 40 researchers and graduates of National Center for Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences (NCMIS), CAS attended the event. Prof. GAO Xiaoshan, the Vice-director of NCMIS presided over the meeting.

Prof. Avner Friedman defined what is meant by “mathematical biology,” and then proceeded to illustrate the degree of its usefulness by examples taken from wound healing, reconstructive surgery, tuberculosis.  He stated that all these examples were modeled by systems of differential equations, and the challenges were researching the biological literature in order to set up a mathematical model, determining the rate parameters and simulating the model. The final test is to show good fit with experimental results, after which the model can be used to suggest new hypothesis.

Professor Friedman is a Distinguished University Professor. He served as the Director of the Institute for Mathematics and its Application at the University of Minnesota during 1987 – 1999, the Director of the Minnesota Center for Industrial Mathematics during the year 1994 – 2001, and the Director for Mathematical Biosciences Institute 2002 - 2008. He serves on numerous editorial boards. He was the Chair of the Board of Mathematical Sciences (1994-1997) and the President of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (1993-1994). Dr. Friedman has been awarded the Sloan Fellowship (1962-65), the Guggenheim Fellowship (1966-7), the Stampacchia Prize (1982), the National Science Foundation Special Creativity Award (1983-85; 1991-93). (Professor Friedman’s homepage: http://www.math.osu.edu/~afriedman)