The Midwest Mathematical Biology Seminar will be a series of virtual talks on mathematical biology featuring speakers from the Midwest region and beyond. All areas of mathematical biology will be represented in the seminar series, and a goal for this seminar is to build connections and foster research collaborations.
Schedule (Fall 2026)
(All talks at 11am Eastern Time / 10am Central Time on Tuesdays)
Zoom link: https://illinois.zoom.us/j/84907159401?pwd=JboBtq30vntVuEpj8s3yYfAdwlb258.1
September 1: Calina Copos (Northeastern University)
Title: Emergence of biased behavior in small cell clusters
Abstract: Left/right asymmetry is a hallmark of living systems, where local interactions among energy-consuming components generate organized large-scale organization. To isolate the minimal ingredients underlying this process, we study cell doublets as the smallest nontrivial collective unit.
Combining experiments and mechanobiochemical modeling, we show how mechanical coupling between cells can generate (and modulate) a directionality bias in collective migration. The first example focuses on a mechanochemical model of cell pairs migrating on flat substrates, where we have identified two motility modes: the individual contributor (IC) mode, in which each cell generates its own traction force dipole, and the supracellular (S) mode, characterized by a single dipole spanning the pair. These motility modes are observed in experimental systems, but with different biases depending on the cell type — amoeboid cells predominantly adopt the IC mode, while mesenchymal cells favor the S mode. We show that the model can capture the emergence of both motility modes and that importantly, not cell-cell interactions, but the extent of protrusions modulate which motility mode is preferred. Lastly, we will discuss a macroscopic, agent-based model for bias in the rotational movement of cell pairs. Together, these models illustrate how symmetry breaking, local interactions, and environmental geometry combine to produce directed behavior in cellular systems.
September 8: Yuta Hozumi (Georgia Tech)
Title: Topological Insight into Viral Evolution
Biological sequences are often represented using the frequencies of short subsequences, or k-mers. While these representations are computationally convenient, they provide limited information about how k-mers are organized and related within a sequence. In this talk, I will present a topological framework for characterizing the multiscale organization of k-mers in genomic sequences. By combining persistent homology with spectral information from the persistent Laplacian, the resulting representation captures both topological and geometric features that are not reflected by k-mer frequencies alone. I will demonstrate how these descriptors can be used to compare and classify viral genomic sequences and to construct quantitative measures of genetic similarity. I will conclude by discussing how this framework can be extended to develop more general structure-aware representations for biological sequence data.
September 15: Pei Liu (Penn State University)
September 22: Zhisheng Shuai (Central Florida University)
September 29: Olivia Clifton (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
October 6: Ashlee Ford Versypt (University of Baffalo)
October 13: Sabina Haque (University of Michigan)
October 20: Ofer Kimchi (New York University)
October 27: Dimitris Pinotsis (MIT)
November 3: Harsh Jain (University of Minnesota Duluth)
November 10: Ryan Goh (Boston University)
November 17: Anna Kraut (St. Olaf College)
November 24: Mari Kawakatsu (University of Michigan)
December 1: Qixin He (Purdue University)
December 8: Joseph Johnson (Carleton College)
Schedule (Spring 2026)
(All talks at 11am Eastern Time / 10am Central Time on Tuesdays)
Zoom link: https://illinois.zoom.us/j/84907159401?pwd=JboBtq30vntVuEpj8s3yYfAdwlb258.1
January 13: Maximillian Newman (University of Chicago)
January 20: Open
January 27: Haridas Das (Oklahoma State University)
February 3: Open
February 10: Open
February 17: Open
February 24: John Metzcar (University of Minnesota)
March 3: Longhua Zhao (Case western reserve)
March 10: Rui Wang (New York University)
March 17: Artem Novozhilov (North Dakota State University)
March 24: Abdel Halloway (Case Western Reserve University)
March 31: Harman Jaggi (Princeton University)
April 7: Desmond Yengi (Grinnell College)
April 14: Nour Khoudari (Purdue University)
April 21: Andrew Krause (Durham University)
April 28: Changhan He (University of South Carolina)
May 5: Naoki Masuda (University of Michigan)
May 12: Kyle Dahlin (Virginia Tech)
May 19: Uduak George (San Diego State University)
May 26: Wanda Strychalski (Case Western Reserve University)
Schedule (Fall 2025)
(All talks at 11am Eastern Time / 10am Central Time on Tuesdays)
Zoom link: https://illinois.zoom.us/j/84907159401?pwd=JboBtq30vntVuEpj8s3yYfAdwlb258.1
September 2: Tin Phan (Los Alamos National Laboratory)
September 9: Maliha Ahmed (MIT)
September 16: Peter Thomas (Case Western Reserve University)
September 23: Maxwell Kreider (Penn State)
September 30: Po-Chun Kuo (Purdue University)
October 7: Naghmeh Akhavan (University of Michigan)
October 14: Hwai-Ray Tung (University of Utah)
October 21: Folashade Agusto (University of Kansas)
October 28: Hyukpyo Hong (University of Wisconsin — Madison)
November 4: Ruby Kim (University of Michigan)
November 11: Swati Patel (Oregon State University)
November 18: Cody FitzGerald (Northwestern University)
November 25: Farshad Shirani (Emory University)
December 2: Ted Loch-Temzelides (Rice University)
December 9: Binan Gu (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)
December 16: Tyler Simmons (University of Minnesota)
Schedule (Spring 2025)
(All talks at 4pm Eastern Time / 3pm Central Time on Fridays)
January 24: Bo Deng (University of Nebraska, Lincoln)
January 31: Mingchao Cai (Morgan State)
February 7: Claus Kadelka (Iowa State University)
February 14: Peter Hinow (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee)
February 21: Chengcheng Huang (University of Pittsburgh)
February 28: Veronica Ciocanel (Duke University)
SPECIAL TIME (2pm Eastern Time / 1pm Central Time)
March 7: Adrian Lam (Ohio State University)
March 14: Sabrina Streipert (University of Pittsburgh)
March 21: Merlin Pelz (University of Minnesota)
March 28: Meghan Ferrall-Fairbanks (University of Florida)
April 4: Zixuan Cang (North Carolina State University)
April 11: Jia Gou (University of California Riverside) Cancelled by the speaker.
April 18: Stephanie Dodson (Colby College)
April 25: Montie Avery (Boston University)
May 2: Bo Zhang ( Oklahoma State University)
Zoom Link: https://illinois.zoom.us/j/82616248519?pwd=CAR0v0aaIpTnIVwxJDa59wFvusobot.1.
May 9: Mario Gómez Flores (Florida State University)
Schedule (Fall 2024)
(All talks at 2pm Eastern Time / 1pm Central Time on Fridays)
September 6: Al Holder (Rose Hulman Institute of Technology)
September 13: Jichun Xie (Duke University)
September 20: Samantha Linn (University of Utah)
September 27: Guowei Wei (Michigan State)
October 4: Polly Yu (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
October 11: Laurel Ohm (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
October 18: Hongsong Feng (Michigan State)
October 25: Alexandria Volkening (Purdue University)
November 1: Hyunjoong Kim (University of Cincinnati)
November 8: Kelsey Gasior (University of Notre Dame)
November 15: Wai-Tong Louis Fan (Indiana University Bloomington)
November 22: Zhe Su (Michigan State)
December 6: Gregory Handy (University of Minnesota)
December 13: Erik Amezquita Morataya (University of Missouri)
This seminar series is co-organized by Ning Wei (Purdue University) and Daniel Cooney (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign). You can sign up for email updates on the seminar series by joining the Midwest Mathematical Biology Google Group (https://groups.google.com/g/midwest-mathematical-biology-seminar/about).