FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Truman's Mathematical Biology Program Makes Waves in San Jose

Students and Faculty Attend Joint Meeting of the Society for Mathematical Biology and the Japanese Society for Mathematical Biology

A group of faculty and students involved in Truman's NSF supported interdisciplinary training program in mathematical biology traveled to San Jose to share the results of their work and to learn about the work of others.

Bill Leeds (Mathematics, '06) delivers a presentation at SMB 2007.

From July 31st until August 4th, a group of sixteen Truman students and faculty members from mathematics, biology, and computer science interacted with others from the life and mathematical sciences at a conference dedicated to work at the intersection of the two sciences. The conference was an annual gathering of the Society for Mathematical Biology which this year was held jointly with the Japanese Society for Mathematical Biology.

The faculty were Michael Adams, Jon Beck, Dean DeCock, Michael Kelrick, Jason Miller. The biology students were James Franklin, Jacob Henderson, Elise Walck, Nathan Whelan. The computer science students were Jonathan Vollmer and Josh Kangas. The mathematics students were Tracey Blasingame, Bryan Hartwig, Chris Hassett, Josh Kelly, and alum Bill Leeds ('06). All students presented their work in the poster presentation session. Mike Adams gave a contributed talk titled "Graph Decompositions for Demoraphic Loop Analysis", and Michael Kelrick gave a contributed talk titled "Unlikely 'gladefellows': facilitation of a rare annual herb (Missouri bladderpod, Lesquerella filiformis) by an invasive native tree (Eastern red cedar, Juniperus virginiana)."

Bill Leeds represented Truman's program in a minisymposium dedicated to the work of schools that have received similar NSF funding. Through his invited talk, "Spatiotemporal analyses of the abundance of Missouri bladderpod (Lesquerella filiformis): conservation of a rare plant species on federal land", he conveyed to the audience the program's high expectations and high level of achievement as well as how seriously we take interdisciplinary work.

This material is the result of work supported by the National Science Foundation's Interdisciplinary Training for Undergraduates in Biology and Mathematics program under Grant No. 0436348, "Research-focused Learning Communities in Mathematical Biology." Information about Truman's Mathematical Biology program can be found on-line at http://mathbio.truman.edu and by contacting Prof. Jason Miller.

###