<p>Not sure if this is the right forum to ask this in, but how important do you think mathematical modeling of biological phenomena is?</p>
<p>It seems there are PhD programs out there that train students to apply math to biology (create models, etc). Does this actually yield useful information for biologists?</p>
<p>Quality models allow us to both represent known phenomena and to test new hypotheses. In today’s world of high-throughput everything and supercomputers, we are constantly needing new ways of dealing with data. Every time someone uses a piece of software to tell them something about their data, they are relying on a mathematical model, whether it’s aligning DNA or predicting future trends of a disease.</p>
<p>For instance, getting the most realistic protein folding algorithm is critical to knowing protein function, drug design, predicting protein-protein interactions, understanding impacts of mutations, etc. Someone else can then take those model-based predictions, test them in a wet lab, and so on, but it all comes back to some math along the way. </p>
<p>Another example is in infectious diseases. A better, more realistic model for evaluating data can mean understanding pathogen emergence, how to respond to an epidemic, how many people need to be vaccinated to prevent a measles outbreak, etc etc. </p>
<p>Or conservation biology. If we can appropriately model an ecosystem, we can best predict whether certain conservation efforts are worthwhile. Or what might happen if certain perturbations occur.</p>
<p>So while one can easily go a career without much direct reliance on math models, the field as a whole moves forward with great thanks to the mathematicians.</p>