Department of Physics & Astronomy

ELIZABETH LAIRD MEMORIAL LECTURE

A virtual Lecture presented via Zoom in association with the Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference (CUPC 2020) 

Please Register in advance at: https://forms.gle/u3uFsNXbDxztwkoRA

Prof. Catherine Beauchemin

Department of Physics, Ryerson University

Virophysics: A physicist's approach to virology

Abstract:

In physics, established knowledge is expressed as one or more equations. Even new knowledge can come about from exploring the properties of these equations. In biology, there are very few equations; knowledge is more commonly expressed through qualitative descriptions of observations. Such descriptions have several shortcomings, and I will show examples of how these have impacted the field. I will go over some of my group's progress in developing mathematical and computational models to describe interactions between cells and viruses in vitro, and some of the fun things we've uncovered along the way. And given the times we're in, I will also talk a bit about COVID-19 from a data analysis perspective and how innumeracy is contributing to the confusion and to controversies. 

Biography:

CATHERINE BEAUCHEMIN is a Professor in the Department of Physics at Ryerson University in Toronto, and a Senior Visiting Scientist in Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS) at RIKEN in Wako, Japan. Her research interest is in self-organizing systems, particularly in mathematical and computer modelling of infectious disease dynamics. Originally from Montreal, she received her undergraduate degree in Computational Physics from the University of Ottawa in 2001 and obtained her PhD in Biophysics from the University of Alberta in 2005. She joined Ryerson in 2007 and is a member of The College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada. 

For more on the LAIRD Lecture series:
https://physics.uwo.ca/news_events/talks/laird_lectures/index.html 

Everyone is welcome!