EUMLS

EU-Ukrainian Mathematicians for Life Sciences

People involved: Biomechanics Group

Funding source: 2011 IRSES, PEOPLE EU 7th Framework Programme

Grant number: EUMLS-2012-295164

Funding period: 2012 - 2016

Website: www.math.uni-luebeck.de/EUMLS/

Partners: Institute of Mathematics, Universität zu Lübeck (Germany), Centre of Mathematics for Applications & Centre for Molecular Biology and Neuroscience, Universitetet i Oslo (Norway), National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Ukraine), National Technical University of Ukraine - Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (Ukraine).

One of the most important developing areas of the life sciences is in the application of mathematics. A number of factors are combining to bring the emerging field of biomathematics to the fore: the vast amount of biological data now available due to advancing hardware techniques such as modern genomics, the increase of readily available computing power with which to analyze data, the recent development of mathematical models and tools allowing new explorations into nonlinear mechanisms in biology, and renewed interest in in-silico modelling due to the ethical and practical considerations required of modern testing methods.

The goal of the 4-year long EUMLS project is to contribute to overcoming the historical communication and cross-disciplinary barriers that exist between the biosciences and mathematics through a comprehensive programme realizing a total of 205 months of research exchanges between five premier Ukrainian mathematical institutes and three partners in Germany, Italy, and Norway, active in different aspects of computational life sciences. After the identification of promising research areas of common interest, several joint teams will pursue these topics, building on staff exchanges between the Ukrainian and the other partners. Main pillars of the project will be annual workshop events, open to all interested researchers, also those not belonging to the project teams, to be held in Ukraine to discuss the joint research topics.

As the outcome, the partners expect a structured collaboration lasting well beyond the project, based on the joint research undertaken and the annual joint workshop series that hopefully will be continued. The project is also intended to support an all-Ukrainian seminar on mathematics and
medicine and the introduction of a Ukrainian bachelor/master program in computational life sciences based on existing experiences of the other partners. The scientific results obtained will be presented in a final conference.