MathBio looks at ‘best picture’

If 2008’s inaugural MathBio Symposium was a big-picture look at collaboration, the focus of this year’s symposium is on the best picture.

MathBio 2: Image, hosted by the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery and the Graduate School on Nov. 19 and 20 at the Fluno Center, will highlight the need for interdisciplinary collaborative efforts to better understand, analyze, visualize and disseminate biological imaging data.

Leading the list of keynote speakers is John Anderson, a senior scientist at Pixar Animation Studios and former UW–Madison atmospheric and oceanic science professor. Anderson, who founded the university’s Computational Sciences Program, has applied his expertise in fluid dynamics to create special effects and animation for films, and will discuss image visualization and analysis and how these approaches including visual abstraction can be applied in scientific imaging.

Panels and presentations are structured to maximize the potential for fruitful cross-disciplinary discussion by inviting contributions from audience members and avoiding dips into jargon and minutia familiar only to experts in a single field.

Maryellen L. Giger, a University of Chicago radiology professor and a leader in computer-aided diagnosis, and Robert F. Murphy, a computational biology professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a renowned expert in cell image analysis, are the other keynote speakers in a schedule that includes a number of UW–Madison life and physical science faculty and members of the Center for Humanities and the for Visual Culture Center.