The Quantitative Biosciences Center is a drop-in help center that undergraduates use as a resource in completing assignments, understanding curriculum, and discussing the applications of computers and mathematics to biology. Students require support to be able to complete quantitative, computer-based assignments and synthesize the incorporation of mathematics and computation with complex biology. Thereby, the construction of the Quantitative Biosciences Center with its “help center” hours and “drop-in service” was born. Graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants staff the center and provide consultation for students engaged in the computational biology curriculum that is integrated into the first 6 courses required in the Biology major. Physical scientists routinely apply computational and mathematical approaches in their fields and thus have the skills to provide technical and conceptual assistance to undergraduate students in the biosciences.
Please visit https://college.uchicago.edu/academics/quantitative-biosciences-center for center hours and to gain access to the Zoom link and feedback survery.
Undergraduate biology education is lacking in the fundamental skills and knowledge of mathematics, computation, physics, and chemistry in understanding the underpinnings of how and why complicated biological processes occur. Physical laws govern how these processes work and a curriculum needs to be created that teaches the undergraduate population how to utilize the skills of applying mathematics to complicated biological processes. This application will enable students to have a better and more fundamental understanding of biology and how it behaves.
The graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants also visit the laboratories in session, grade the relevant assignments, and give seminar series that highlight the connection and intersection of the physical and biological sciences. This enables the teaching assistants to function as a “quantitative biology team”, understanding the assignments first-hand and giving guidance and perspective for the students as they proceed through the course sequence.
Often the application of mathematical models to biological systems explicitly invokes principles from the physical sciences. Allowing an interdisciplinary team composed of graduate and undergraduate students to mentor biology students creates a situation where both groups explore the intersection between the biological and physical sciences.
Objectives
- Create an easily accessible quantitative biosciences help center, located in the building where students take most of their biology classes.
- Create a “quantitative biology team” made up of graduate and undergraduate students who staff the center throughout the academic year. This team provides one-on-one assistance and small-group support for computational assignments in the fundamental, advanced biology, and pre-medical sciences biology sequences. The team also provides continuity in the quantitative thread that spans the introductory biology courses.
- Utilize the center to highlight the relevance of a quantitative perspective across the biological sciences.
- Utilize the center to nurture and enrich learning for biology students interested in computers, physics, and mathematics.
Example assignment – cell cycle control – system of six-ODEs.