Modeling the immune response
Rob de Boer (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
In the past few decades the scientific knowledge about the immune system
has grown explosively, but this has mainly revealed qualitative
information. To properly understand a system as complicated as the
immune system, we also need to have a more quantitative understanding.
Quantitative interpretation of experimental data typically requires
mathematical modeling, and fitting these models to experimental data.
Since the cellular interactions in the immune systems are so complex
that one will never be able to identify all parameters of any realistic
model one has to describe experimental data with simplified models. We will
discuss how to select and formulate such models, and in a tutorial session
participants will learn about fitting such models to experimental data. We
will close by discussing other modeling approaches, like agent based models.
