E5: From Data to Physical Models in Biology - 74535
(2.5hrs/week - lecture and exercises - 4 CP - Spring 2026)

Richard Neher, Erik van Nimwegen

Over the past 3 decades, biology has become a data rich science and making sense of ever increasing data volumes has become a central challenge. The data are gathered from biological systems that operate by the laws of physics. Analysis of these data should respect the underlying physical constraints and ideally inform us about the processes that generate and shape the data. This course will introduce mathematical and physical concepts and methods relevant to the analysis and interpretation of often noisy data on biological systems. Students are expected to have a solid background in physical and mathematical sciences as well as numerical analysis.
Specifically, the course will cover

· Introduction to probability and information theory
· Exploratory data analysis (clustering, dimensionality reduction)
· Exact and approximate techniques to infer complex models from data
· Elements of stochastic processes
· Elements of dynamics systems
· Physical limits to biological information processing