Dynamical Modeling of Biological Systems: With realistic examples and exercises in MATLAB across genetics, neuroscience, physiology, evolution, ecology and epidemiology.

This book introduces concepts and practical tools for dynamical mathematical modeling of biological systems. Dynamical models describe the behavior of a system over time as a result of internal feedback loops and external forcing, based on mathematically formulated dynamical laws, similarly to how Newton's laws describe the movement of celestial bodies. Dynamical models are increasingly popular in biology, as they tend to be more powerful than static regression models. This book is meant for undergraduate and graduate students in physics, applied mathematics and data science with an interest in biology, as well as students in biology with a strong interest in mathematical methods.The book covers deterministic models (for example differential equations), stochastic models (for example Markov chains and autoregressive models) and model-independent aspects of time series analysis. Plenty of examples and exercises are included, often taken or inspired from the scientific literature, and covering a broad range of topics such as neuroscience, cell biology, genetics, evolution, ecology, microbiology, physiology, epidemiology and conservation. The book delivers generic modeling techniques used across a wide range of situations in biology, and hence readers from other scientific disciplines will find that much of the material is also applicable in their own field. Proofs of most mathematical statements are included for the interested reader, but are not essential for a practical understanding of the material.The book introduces the popular scientific programming language MATLAB as a tool for simulating models, fitting models to data, and visualizing data and model predictions. The material taught is current as of MATLAB version 2022b. The material is taught in a sufficiently general way that also permits the use of alternative programming languages. Read more