Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

International Initiatives

• STIC AmSud 20-STIC-05

  • Title: New Methods for Biological Control of the Arboviruses

  • International Partner (Institution - Laboratory - Researcher):

    • CIRAD (Montpellier), UMR MISTEA (Montpellier), Université Paris 13, Université de Bordeaux, Université de Strasbourg, Université Paris-Dauphine - PSL; Universidad de Buenos Aires and Universidad Nacional de Salta (Argentina); Universidad de Chile (Chile); Universidad del Quindio, Universidad Autónoma de Occidente and Universidad del Valle (Colombia); National University of Asuncion (Paraguay).

  • Duration: 2020 - 2021

  • Start year: 2020

  • The main focus of this project is modeling and analysis, using mathematical methods, of new strategies aimed at controling the spread of the dengue fever and other vector-borne diseases similar to Dengue and transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, like Chikungunya and Zika virus.

  • The key topics are the following.

    • Spatial aspects of biological control techniques

    • Estimation issues for vector-borne epidemics

    • Optimal and non-optimal control approaches for biological control techniques

    • Modelling the effects of conventional control methods on the success of biological control

    • Modelling the competition effects in larval phase during biological control

    • Modelling and efficacy measures for self-propagating genetic interventions

    • Genome-scale models for Wolbachia

• ERC Advanced grant No 740623 ADORA

  ADORA is the acronym for Asymptotic approach to spatial and dynamical organizations.

  Adora ERC project aims at understanding of spatial, social and dynamical organization of large numbers of agents, presently a fundamental issue in science. ADORA focuses on problems motivated by biology because, more than anywhere else, access to precise and numerous data has opened the route to novel and complex mathematical models. The address ed problems are written in terms of nonlinear partial differential equations. The flux-limited Keller-Segel system, the integrate-and-fire Fokker-Planck equation, kinetic equations with internal state, nonlocal parabolic equations and constrained Hamilton-Jacobi equations are among examples of the equations under investigation.

  The role of mathematics is not only to understand the analytical structure of these new problems, but it is also to explain the qualitative behavior of solutions and to quantify their properties. The challenge arises here because these goals should be achieved through a hierarchy of scales. Indeed, the problems under consideration share the common feature that the large scale behavior cannot be understood precisely without access to a hierarchy of finer scales, down to the individual behavior and sometimes its molecular determinants.

  Major difficulties arise because the numerous scales present in these equations have to be discovered and singularities appear in the asymptotic process which yields deep compactness obstructions. Our vision is that the complexity inherent to models of biology can be enlightened by mathematical analysis and a classification of the possible asymptotic regimes.

  However an enormous effort is needed to uncover the equations intimate mathematical structures, and bring them at the level of conceptual understanding they deserve being given the applications motivating these questions which range from medical science or neuroscience to cell biology.

MaMoCeMa

• Title: Mathematical modeling of cell motility and of autophagy

• International Partner (Institution - Laboratory - Researcher):

• University of Vienna (Austria) - Wolfgang Pauli Institute - Christian Schmeiser

• Start year: 2018

• Numerous fruitful collaborations have been developed these last years between the WPI and the Inria team MAMBA. Diane Peurichard – newly recruited permanent member of the team MAMBA- worked two years (2016-2017) with Christian Schmeiser -member of the present project- through a post-doctoral contract at the university of Vienna. In collaboration with the biologists of IST, they developed mathematical tools to understand how cells move through adhesion-based and adhesion-free motion with applications in cancer development, prevalent theme of the team MAMBA. Collaborations WPI-MAMBA have been maintained and ensured by the sabbatical of Marie Doumic (2016-2018) -, working at the university of Vienna with Christian Schmeiser and the PhD student Julia Delacour. They have initiated a collaboration on the mathematical modeling of autophagy, which requires both C. Schmeiser’s expertise in biomechanics and M. Doumic’s knowledge on aggregation processes. This team will also benefit of the strong links that C. Schmeiser has developed with the two biologists teams of S. Martens (on autophagy) and M. Sixt (on cell movement).

Participation in Other International Programs

• BMBF (Germany) / LiSym; 2016-2020 LiSym addresses liver diseases and regeneration, namely, steatosis, fibrosis and cirrhosis, and acute on chronic liver failure. (Dirk Drasdo)

• BMBF (Germany) / MSDILI; 2016-2019 MS-DILI addresses multiscale modeling of drug-induced liver disease focusing on the role of APAP. Dirk Drasdo participates in this project. (Dirk Drasdo)