BIO SIGMAA Newsletter
Summer 2015
From our Chair
Dear BIO SIGMAA members,
Welcome to our summer issue of the BIO SIGMAA Newsletter. We just want to update our members on what's been happening behind the scenes at BIO SIGMAA. We have lots to report.
Many thanks to Erin Bodine for her work on the conference survey. It will really help us serve you better as we make plans for future conference activities. QUBES is doing great work and we're proud to be involved. Thanks Carrie for keeping us in the loop
There will be a number of education sessions at the SMB Annual Meeting in Atlanta (June 30-July 3). If you're at SMB, please show your support for the SMB Education Committee. Also, Tim Comar has organized a BIO SIGMAA session at MathFest in Washington DC (August 5-8). Thanks Tim! There will also be a SIGMAA Fair this year for us to learn about SIGMAAS. Stop by if you're at MathFest!
I'm also excited about our activities at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Seattle (January 6-9, 2016). In addition to our usual Reception, Business Meeting, Guest Lecture and Contributed Paper Session, we'll be hosting our first JMM Invited Paper Session (we also held one at Mathfest in San Jose). Thanks to Brian Walton, Jennifer Galovich and Tim Comar for all their help on the JMM activities.
Please email me (mmccarthy@murraystate.edu) with your ideas for how BIO SIGMAA can better serve our members. Have a great summer!
Maeve McCarthy,
BIO SIGMAA Chair
Survey
Contributed by Erin N. Bodine,
Secretary
Thank you to everyone who participated in the survey, and a special thank you to those who gave us feedback on the survey when it first went live so we could fix the list of MAA sections. The following gives a brief summary of the results of the survey.
We asked for the frequency with which you attended your section MAA meetings, the Joint Math Meetings (JMM), MathFest, the Society of Mathematical Biology (SMB) annual meeting, and the annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology: Education and Research (BEER). The table below summarizes the responses.
The BioSIGMMA officers committee was delighted to see that there were so many of you who regularly attend your section MAA meetings. If you are organizing Biomath themed minisymposium at your next section MAA meeting, please consider writing a short blurb about the session for the BioSIGMAA newsletter. We additionally asked you to identify your MAA section, and found that BioSIGMAA has members in at least 20 sections (see break down in the table below).
Celebrating 100 years in Washington, DC
Contributed by Jennifer Galovich,
Treasurer
Keep open Friday afternoon, August 7 for the contributed paper session in mathematical and computational biology. Tim Comar of Benedictine University is the organizer. The focus is on undergraduate research activities and will feature presentations of research results as well as discussion of the nuts and bolts of starting an undergraduate research program in this area.
Friday evening, at the Pi Mu Epsilon banquet, the Janet L. Andersen award will be given to a student presenter for excellence in mathematical and computational biology.
Also, be sure to stop by the BioSIGMAA table at the SIGMAA Fair.
Mathematical Biology Education at SMB
Contributed by Carrie Diaz Eaton,
Electronic Communications Chair
One way to see the growing presence of mathematical biology education and the active involvement of our past and present executive team is to look at the program of the upcoming Annual Meeting for the Society of Mathematical Biology. A four session series on the first conference day was co-organized by Elsa Schaefer (most recent past Electronic Communications Chair), Carrie Diaz Eaton (current Communications Chair), and Dorothy Wallace and also features both BIO SIGMAA's most recent past Chair, Lester Caudill, and our Secretary, Erin Bodine.
The SMB Meeting will be held June 30 - July 3 in Atlanta, GA. For more information and the full program, see http://math.gsu.edu/~smb/.
New Faculty Mentoring Network at BEER '15 - Apply NOW!
Do you want to keep track of your research group activities, involve professors and students from other departments or universities in common research, or make the pathway to publication in journals like SPORA or LiB easier? Did you know that QUBES Hub (https://qubeshub.org) can be used to run a variety of computational tools in the cloud, for everything from agent-based modeling simulations in NetLogo to big data analysis in R?
Join us at BEER 2015 to kick off an online network that will be focused on using QUBES Hub to manage research groups in quantitative and mathematical biology education and research
Dates & Location:
Friday, October 9, 2015 from 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM preceding the International Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research meeting at Illinois State University in Normal, IL.
To apply, please go to: https://goo.gl/REgTok. Application deadline is Thursday, June 25th. Accepted applicants will be notified by July 2th,
QUESTIONS?
You can find more information by visiting the website here: https://qubeshub.org/groups/beer2015/
Questions can also be directed via email to Carrie Diaz Eaton at ceaton@unity.edu.