

Research: Theory, models and biology - thanatosmin
http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e07158

======
donovanr
I am a 5th year computational biology student, and have yet to take any real
coursework in theoretical biology, despite the fact that most of what I do
could be broadly classified as exactly that.

Theoretical biology seems to be the black sheep of both the wet-lab biology
and simulation communities, a situation that I wish were different, but
honestly it can be difficult to make a compelling case for the role/yield of
theory in biology beyond a few simple models and natural selection etc.

It's frustrating, because I think the most fruitful area we can work on is
developing a better understanding / mathematical formulation of the incredibly
high dimensional, nonlinear, stochastic spaces that biological systems live
in, but it's difficult to see the way forward because no on (that I know of)
is putting time into thinking about it.

~~~
austinjp
As someone who's considering using system dynamics to model musculoskeletal
systems, I'd be interested in your experiences. Could you pm me your email?

~~~
donovanr
I work at the cellular/molecular scales in a computational biology program;
musculoskeletal stuff can often find a home in bioengineering departments. Not
sure how much insight I can offer, but feel free to shoot me an email, my
contact info is here:
[http://www.pitt.edu/~donovanr/](http://www.pitt.edu/~donovanr/)

