Event

I will discuss two mathematical problems in biological pattern formation. The first is on modeling concentric ring patterns formed in engineered bacterial colonies. I will first present a hybrid model that incorporates a detailed description of cell movement and cell signaling  and explains the underlying mechanism of the ring pattern. I will then present a PDE model derived from the hybrid model that captures the biological phenomena equally well. The second concerns spatial pattern formation in reaction-diffusion systems. I will discuss a computational method that can be used to discover potentially all nonuniform steady states of the PDE system, describing the structure of the spatial patterns. The method uses techniques from numerical algebraic geometry. This talk is based on joint work with Min Tang from Shanghai Jiaotong University and Wenrui Hao from Penn State University.