Utrecht University > Faculty of Science > department of Biology > Theoretical Biology & Bioinformatics >
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Rob J. de Boer |
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The book Theoretical Biology comes from a course given to first year undergraduate biology students at Utrecht University. The Appendix of this book gives a short tutorial on phase plane analysis (including linearization and the Jacobi matrix). These tools are used to study ODE models from various biological disciplines ranging from ecology, neurobiology, virology to gene regulation. Students completing this course successfully should be able to read published models critically and know how to interpret results obtained with mathematical models within their biological discipline.
The book Theoretical Fysiology comes from a course given to undergraduate students in Biomedicine. It overlaps strongly with the Theoretical Biology book, but skips the material on computing a Jacobian matrix, and omits the chapters on Theoretical Ecology. A shorter variant of this book was used to give a course on Theoretical Immunology. After a few introductory chapters this book only discusses models in immunology.
The book Modeling Population Dynamics: a graphical approach originates from a course given to undergraduate students in Ecology. The book covers the basic material of Theoretical Ecology like predator prey models, competition models, meta-population models, and so on. Models are analyzed by phase plane analysis. One major aim of the book is to provide students with an approach to develop simple mechanistic ODE models. Students having completed this course should be able to define novel mathematical models by themselves. They should at least be able to judge whether the various terms used in a mathematical model are realistic and/or well-defined.
The booklet Rekenen aan de afweer contains the Dutch text of my inaugural lecture for the chair in Theoretical Immunology at Utrecht University.