FAU MoD Lecture: Do you think you understand sex and death? Why predictions about biological processes require more than just intuition

Date: Tue. January 28, 2025
Event: FAU MoD Lecture
Organized by: FAU MoD, the Research Center for Mathematics of Data at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany)

FAU MoD Lecture: Do you think you understand sex and death? Why predictions about biological processes require more than just intuition
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Hanna Kokko
Affiliation: Institute of Organismic and Molecular Evolution (iomE). Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (Germany)

Abstract. I sometimes state, in a slightly tongue in cheek manner, that biologists are the only people who do not understand why sex exists. This is because they appreciate that asexual reproduction is also often possible, and can be very efficient. I will illuminate some of the complications that follow using Daphnia (waterfleas) as an example, and then I will turn to a very different topic: evolution of senescence. If natural selection favours, all else being equal, longer lifespans, it is difficult to explain why there is so much variation in lifespans in nature. This talk, as a whole, illuminates the theoretical side of evolutionary biology (why biologists, too, need a dose of equations in their training).

OUR SPEAKER

Hanna Kokko is an Alexander von Humboldt professor of evolutionary ecology at the University of Mainz – and listed as one of “50 Scientists that inspire” by Cell Press in 2024, so let’s hope her talk will inspire. In her work, she uses various mathematical tools to understand the ways that evolution produces vast diversity of outcomes regarding life histories, mating systems, and other features of organisms. She is particularly interested in the evolutionary analysis of conflicts between entities (inividual organisms, or also conflict between genetic entities) and how these are shaped by the specifics of each species’ ecological setting and its own traits, such as sex determination or genetic architecture.

AUDIENCE

This is a hybrid event (On-site/online) open to: Public, Students, Postdocs, Professors, Faculty, Alumni and the scientific community all around the world.

WHEN

Tue. January 28, 2025 at 14:30H (Berlin time)

WHERE

On-site / Online

 
You might like:
• FAU MoD Lectures
• FAU MoD Lecture: Measuring productivity and fixedness in lexico-syntactic constructions by Prof. Dr. Stephanie Evert
• FAU MoD Lecture: New avenues for the interaction of computational mechanics and machine learning by Prof. Dr. Paolo Zunino
• FAU MoD Lecture: Discovering and Communicating Excellence by Prof. Dr. Ute Klammer
• FAU MoD Lecture: Thoughts on Machine Learning by Prof. Dr. Rupert Klein
• FAU MoD Lecture: Using system knowledge for improved sample efficiency in data-driven modeling and control of complex technical systems by Prof. Dr. Sebastian Peitz
• FAU MoD Lecture: Image Reconstruction – The Dialectic of Modelling and Learning by Prof. Dr. Martin Burger
• FAU MoD Lecture: The role of Artificial Intelligence in the future of mathematics by Prof. Dr. Amaury Hayat
• FAU MoD Lecture: FAU MoD Lecture. Special November 2023 by Prof. Dr. Michael Kohlhase and Prof. Dr. Edriss S. Titi
• FAU MoD Lecture: Free boundary regularity for the obstacle problem by Prof. Dr. Alessio Figalli
• FAU MoD Lecture: Physics-Based and Data-Driven-Based Algorithms for the Simulation of the Heart Function by Prof. Dr. Alfio Quarteroni
• FAU MoD Lecture: From Physics-Informed Machine Learning to Physics-Informed Machine Intelligence: Quo Vadimus? by Prof. Dr. George Karniadakis
• FAU MoD Lecture: From Alan Turing to contact geometry: Towards a “Fluid computer” by Prof. Dr. Eva Miranda
• FAU MoD Lecture: Applications of AAA Rational Approximation by Prof. Dr. Nick Trefethen
• FAU MoD Lecture: Learning-Based Optimization and PDE Control in User-Assignable Finite Time by Prof. Dr. Miroslav Krstic

_
Don’t miss out our last news and connect with us!
www.mod.fau.eu/events

LinkedIn | X (Twitter) | Instagram