The explosion of knowledge and data in the life sciences -- produced at all scales of biological organization, from the molecular to the global-- is one of the leading phenomena of 21st century biological science. Extracting meaning from these complex systems, and turning them into useful descriptions (of, for example, the fine structure of protein active sites or the climate impacts of changes in seasonal patterns) demands mathematical thinking, mathematical modeling and new mathematical tools.  A new field is emerging at the interface of the life sciences and the quantitative sciences, but real progress in that field will not come from simply bringing traditionally trained mathematicians together with traditionally trained scientists. Instead, we need a new cohort of biomathematicians, explicitly trained at that interface.
To build that cohort, the Four College Biomathematics Consortium (4CBC), supported by the NSF Undergraduate Biomathematics training grant, together with the Five Colleges, Inc., created an active biomath community across four campuses: Smith College, Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College and Hampshire College.  During the 6 years of the grant, the consortium developed 65 research projects involving collaboration between faculty and students across mathematical and life sciences. These projects engaged 77 funded research students and another approximately 47 students for 1-5 semester and/or summer work.  Projects spanned the range of biological scales from molecular level studies (examples include the kinetics of protein folding and modeling dynein motor protein transport dynamics), to GIS based modeling of infectious disease transmission, to the geometry of an ecological arms race. The projects led to over 40 undergraduate honors theses and 17 peer-reviewed publications. Of the 41 program fellows that have graduated, 11 are pursuing PhD or MD/PhD programs, 5 have pursued Master’s degrees in biomath related fields, 13 are employed in biological sciences research laboratories and 6 are engaged in technical fields. 
The 4CBC institutionalized the Biomathematical Sciences in the Five Colleges (the previous four colleges and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst) by creating the Five College Biomathematical Sciences Certificate Program.  Students in the certificate program complement their major field of focus (life sciences or quantitative sciences) through coursework in the reciprocal field.  They also engage in research projects that bridge life sciences and quantitative sciences, culminating in a capstone project that integrates their coursework and experiential learning. This program includes the gateway Frontiers in Biomathematics course, developed through the grant collaborations. The course introduces students to modeling software (Matlab or R) during a 4-week bootcamp.  This is followed by three-week modules that introduce students to two biomath research questions to which they can apply the modeling tools they have learned during the bootcamp.  These modules often include data collection and lab work and serve to recruit students to longer term participation in the research projects. The certificate program together with the Frontiers course are maintained by the biomath community created through the 4CBC grant.

Last Modified: 11/16/2017
Modified by: Christophe Gole