About quantitative biology…
Quantitative biology is an approach to understanding biological mechanisms which uses a combination of quantitative methods mainly from physics, mathematics and computer science.
With the advances in biological instrumentation and techniques, and easy access to computing power, biology is generating large amounts of data at an increasing speed. Acquiring the data and making sense of it increasingly requires quantitative approaches. At the same time, coming from a physicist's or mathematician's point of view, biology has reached a state of maturity where theoretical models of biological mechanisms can be tested experimentally. This has led to the development of the broad field of quantitative biology.
Quantitative biology is highly interdisciplinary as it uses tools from computer science, physics and mathematics to address biological questions. Almost if not all major research areas in biology (ecology, evolution, development, cell and molecular biology, physiology) rely in part on advances in quantitative biology. For instance trying to understand the dynamics of given species/populations for conservation purposes, predicting the effects of climate change, or how a disease is likely to spread geographically, all require simulation modelling and mathematical modelling. The same goes for understanding how species are evolutionarily related, how genes interact during development, or how molecules interact during developmental or physiological events. On the other hand, informatics tools such as image processing and 3D visualization can be crucial to quantitatively analyze biological image data in any field, including medical, and the list goes on....
The common denominator to all these questions and approaches is the use of quantitative science. Quantitative biology groups bioinformatics, systems biology, simulation modelling, and mathematical modelling.
What background do you need to do quantitative biology?
Researchers involved in quantitative biology come from very diverse backgrounds, from mathematicians who learned biology, to biologists who learned physics or computer science.
Similarly, students interested in quantitative science and biology can come from many different scientific backgrounds.
What is this website about?
This website gives information on some of the research groups involved in quantitative aspects of biology in Ottawa, at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. Our research groups span several departments and faculties (Departments of Biology, Mathematics, Physics, and the School of Information Technology and Engineering at the University of Ottawa, Biology and Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University). It is our hope that a common website will facilitate interactions among researchers, and provide students with a portal to quantitative biology in Ottawa.
