Mark Fricker -- Adaptive Biological Networks: from slime to society [IN PERSON]
| Dates: | 20 October 2025 |
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| Times: | 14:00 - 15:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Department of Mathematics |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Current University students |
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| Speaker: | Mark Fricker |
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Join us for this seminar by Mark Fricker (Oxford) as part of the Maths in the Life Sciences seminar series (and the online North West Seminar Series in Mathematical Biology and Data Sciences in collaboration with Liverpool Universities).
Title: Adaptive Biological Networks: from slime to society
Abstract: Many different biological systems form physical transport networks to distribute resources throughout the organism, including plant and animal vascular systems, fungal mycelia and acellular slime mold plasmodia. There is an expectation that these networks should exhibit some form of combinatorial optimisation between the cost of making and maintaining the network, the efficiency of transport through the network, it’s adaptability to fluctuations in the environment, and the resilience of the system to accidental damage or even targeted attack. We also assume that the network has to dynamically self-organise both the architecture and flow routing pathways based on local rules with no centralised control. This talk will present a number of the systems where we have combined empirical measurements with mathematical modelling and highlight our continued ignorance on how these beautifully complex systems work.
The talk will be also be streamed via Teams, please contact carl.whitfield@manchester.ac.uk or igor.chernyavsky@manchester.ac.uk for the zoom link, or sign up to the mailing list.
To subscribe to the mailing list for this event series, please send an e-mail with the phrase “subscribe math-lifesci-seminar” in the message body to listserv@listserv.manchester.ac.uk
Speaker
Mark Fricker
Role: Professor
Organisation: University of Oxford
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
1.009
Roscoe Building
Manchester
