Eavesdropping on cancer
It is quite difficult to extract information from your body. Your body is so vast that millions upon millions of messages get sent and deleted every second. It is impossible to know exactly who said something. The doctor’s main challenge is finding a way to reconstruct the network of interacting cells given the limited information she can measure.
Is a rapidly mutating virus unstoppable?
How can one hope to understand the precise structure of a virus if it is able to become unrecognizable within weeks? The mathematics behind this questions didn't let go of my mind for extensive periods of time during my PhD studies in Belgium.
How do you decide who is the most important?
Imagine you’re in a remote village and only have a limited number of vaccines to distribute to protect the community from a deadly virus, who do you vaccinate?
A difficult decision, but necessary. Assuming that the disease is just as deadly for everyone in the community, the best way to prevent deaths is to contain the spread of the virus.
Interview with Birgit Sollie
Birgit Sollie is a PhD student at the VU Amsterdam, where she does research in stochastic processes and mathematical biology. In this interview she talks about her research and her motivation for doing mathematics.
Mathematics against Corona
Now that the summer vacation is over we need to arm ourselves against the anticipated second peak in the fall. That is why three PhD students at the department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the Eindhoven University of Technology are working hard to analyze all facts and figures of the pandemic so far, and […]
Vaccinations and networks
In 2014 UNICEF announced that polio had been eradicated in India, one of the last strongholds of the disease. The World Health Organization is optimistic that by the end of next year, polio will be eradicated worldwide. The reason: a very effective vaccination campaign.