Overview

Held annually in the winter, this workshop is discussion-based and thematically very broad. Open problems in biology are presented by leading researchers, who share their high-level perspectives. These invited speakers are also chosen because they can productively and enthusiastically engage with the many questions and comments from the diverse workshop audience that includes junior researchers and curious mathematicians.
Monday-Thursday the workshop features three talks in the morning from invited participants selected by the NITMB Theme Leaders, with workshop goals in mind. The invited participants and theme leaders then facilitate small-group discussion sessions in the afternoons. The workshop wraps up on Friday morning with a discussion of emerging research directions based on the week’s activity. All workshop participants will have an opportunity during the workshop to showcase their research in lightning talks and poster sessions.
This workshop is an excellent opportunity to experience the NITMB and learn about its opportunities. It is an ideal workshop for early career researchers, as well as mathematical scientists who are curious about current research questions in biology. This workshop may also appeal to established biological scientists and mathematical biologists who want to learn about topics and approaches in diverse biological and mathematical domains over the course of one week of discussions.
The annual Emerging Directions Workshop is designed to spark new cross-theme research activity, new working groups, and new proposals for convening programs. The NITMB prioritizes fostering a supportive and collaborative research environment. It aims to broaden cross-domain understanding and to promote new mathematical research that can lead to new insights and new discoveries in biology.
Schedule
February 17 2025 Monday
Chair: Vicenzo Vitelli
8:30 am - 8:50 am
Light Breakfast
8:50 am - 8:55 am
Welcome & Introduction of Institute
8:55 am - 9:00 am
Welcome to Workshop & Housekeeping
9:00 am - 9:45 am
Talk: Giulio Biroli
"A statistical physics approach to species-rich ecosystems, meta-communities and non-reciprocal interacting complex agents"
9:45 am - 10:00 am
Discussion
10:00 am - 10:30 am
30sec self-introductions
10:30 am - 10:45 am
Coffee Break
10:45 am - 11:30 am
Talk: Marc Howard
11:30 am - 11:45 am
Discussion
11:45 am - 12:00 pm
Group Photo (35th floor)
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Lunch
1:00 pm - 1:45 pm
Talk: Julia Palacios
1:45 pm - 2:00 pm
Discussion
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Small Group Discussions
3:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Break
3:30 pm - 4:00 pm
Report back
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Poster session
February 18 2025 Tuesday
Chair: Tuca Auffinger
8:30 am - 8:55 am
Light Breakfast
8:55 am - 9:00 am
Welcome & Housekeeping
9:00 am - 9:45 am
Talk: Christine Heitsch
9:45 am - 10:00 am
Discussion
10:00 am - 10:30 am
Break
10:30 am - 11:15 am
Talk: Sean Lawley
"Extremes and anomalies are normal in biology"
11:15 am - 11:30 am
Discussion
11:30 am - 12:00 pm
Break
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Lunch
2:00 pm - 2:45 pm
Talk: Jasmine Foo
2:45 pm - 3:00 pm
Discussion
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Small Group Discussions
4:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Report back
4:30 pm - 6:00 pm
Reception
February 19 2025 Wednesday
Chairs: Rebecca Willett and Niall Mangan
8:30 am - 8:55 am
Light Breakfast
8:55 am - 9:00 am
Welcome & Housekeeping
9:00 am - 9:45 am
Talk: Na Li
"AI-Cyborg Systems: Algorithmic Advances for Monitoring and Modulation of Biological Systems"
9:45 am - 10:00 am
Discussion
10:00 am - 10:45 am
Coffee Break
10:45 am - 11:30 am
Talk: Alexander Strang:
"Latent Space Representations of No-Regret Learning and Evolutionary Game Dynamics"
11:30 am - 11:45 am
Discussion
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Lunch
2:00 pm - 2:30 pm
Lightning Talks
Omer Granek – “Metastability of Flocks”
Einar Gunnarsson – “Optimal dosing of anti-cancer treatment under
drug-induced plasticity”
Maximillian Newman – “Correlation of coalescent trees at unlinked Loci”
Ran Zhou – “Assess and predict inflammatory flare-up in
patient with Crohn’s disease”
Polly Yu – “Network Structure & System Dynamics”
2:30 pm - 4:00 pm
Small Group Discussions
4:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Report back
February 20 2025 Thursday
Chairs: Rosemary Braun/Stephanie Palmer
8:30 am - 8:55 am
Light Breakfast
8:55 am - 9:00 am
Welcome & Housekeeping
9:00 am - 9:45 am
Talk: Smita Krishnaswamy
"Inferring and Characterizing Cellular and Neural Dynamics with Geometric and Topological Deep Learning"
9:45 am - 10:00 am
Discussion
10:00 am - 10:45 am
Coffee Break
10:45 am - 11:30 am
Talk: Andrea Giometto
11:30 am - 11:45 am
Discussion
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Lunch
2:00 pm - 2:30 pm
Lightning Talks
Samantha Linn – “Extreme statistics in stochastic search”
Farshad Shirani – “The Evolution of a Species’ Range”
Hwai-Ray Tung – “Missed an antibiotic dose – what to do?”
2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
Small Group Discussions
3:30 pm - 4:00 pm
Report back
February 21 2025 Friday
Chair: Mary Silber
8:30 am - 8:55 am
Light Breakfast
8:55 am - 9:00 am
Welcome & Housekeeping
9:00 am - 10:00 am
Wrap up Discussions
10:00 am - 10:30 am
Coffee Break
10:30 am - 11:30 am
Planning What's Next: e.g. Publications, Workshops, Collabs, Visits
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Lunch
Participants
Participants
Giulio Biroli – École Normale Supérieure (Speaker)
Jasmine Foo – University of Minnesota (Speaker)
Andrea Giometto – Cornell University (Speaker)
Christine Heitsch – Georgia Institute of Technology (Speaker)
Marc Howard – Boston University (Speaker)
Smita Krishnaswamy – Yale University (Speaker)
Sean Lawley – University of Utah (Speaker)
Na Li – Harvard University (Speaker)
Krithika Manohar – University of Washington (Speaker)
Julia Palacios – Stanford University (Speaker)
Alexander Strang – University of California, Berkeley (Speaker)
Elie Alhajjar – RAND
Michael Alpert – Northwestern University
Antonio Auffinger – Northwestern University
Mahsa Bagherikalhor – Shahid Beheshti University
Miles Bakenhus – Illinois Institute of Technology
Anindita Basu – University of Chicago
Luis Bettencourt – University of Chicago
Eliza Blodget – University of Chicago
Rosemary Braun – Northwestern University (Theme Leader)
Vasileios Charisopoulos – University of Chicago
Minshuo Chen – Northwestern University
Hannah Chen – University of Chicago
Changqing Cheng – Binghamton University
Andrew Dennehy – University of Chicago
Adela DePavia – University of Chicago
Alexander Diefes – Duke University
Wandi Ding – Middle Tennessee State University
Nan Ding – Northwestern University
Sylvia Durian – University of Chicago
Ryan Febryanto – University of Chicago
Cody FitzGerald – Northwestern University
Jingting Gao – Northwestern University
Evan Gibbs – York College of Pennsylvania
Jorin Graham – Northwestern University
Brandon Grandison – University of Chicago
Omer Granek – University of Chicago
Einar Bjarki Gunnarsson – University of Iceland
Ethan Halingstad – Northwestern University
Alasdair Hastewell – NITMB (NITMB Fellow)
Joseph Hibdon – Northeastern Illinois University
Jorge Jaramillo – University of Chicago
Manu Jayadharan – Northwestern University
Yucheng Jin – Northwestern University
William Kath – Northwestern University
Nathan Kirk – Illinois Institute of Technology
Risi Kondor – University of Chicago
Istvan Kovacs – Northwestern University
Benjamin Kuznets-Speck – Northwestern University
Samantha Linn – University of Utah
Xinyi Liu – Northwestern University
Aditya Mahadevan – Stanford University
Niall Mangan – Northwestern University (Theme Leader)
Madhav Mani – Northwestern University
Uriel Martínez León – New York University
Megan Morrison – Illinois Institute of Technology
Gal Mishne – University of California, San Diego (Speaker)
Maximillian Newman – Indiana University Bloomington
Kayode Oluwasegun – Drexel University
Samantha Riesenfeld – University of Chicago
Ryan Robinett – University of Chicago
Jared Salisbury – University of Chicago
Anastasiya Salova – Northwestern University
Mariya Savinov – New York University
Mattia Scandolo – University of Chicago
Aaron Scheiner – Northwestern University
Farshad Shirani – Emory University
Jacob Shkrob – New York University
Mary Silber – University of Chicago
Mary Skillicorn – Northwestern University
Jonathan Sutkowski – Northwestern University
Maximilian Topel – University of Chicago
Hwai-Ray Tung – University of Utah
Vincenzo Vitelli – University of Chicago (Theme Leader)
Jiangdi Wang – University of Chicago
Kexiang Wang – University of Chicago
Shmuel Weinberger – University of Chicago (Theme Leader)
Rebecca Willett – University of Chicago (Theme Leader)
Polly Yu – University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Wenjing Zhang – Texas Tech University
Ran Zhou – University of Chicago
Mushal Zia – Michigan State University