Directors and Mission

Duties of the Directors

The director provides the scientific leadership, promotes the institution’s mission and goals, and is responsible for the overall management and resource development of the institute. The director reports to the Board of Trustees.

The Senior Associate Director acts as the Director during the Director's absence and designs and implements initiatives consistent with the MBI mission.

Three Associate Directors provide scientific advice and support to the director. Along with the Director, they visit bioscience laboratories in the public and private sectors in order to initiate and nurture interactions with the institute. Associate Director Dennis Pearl is responsible for the education programs, as well as the evaluation process. Associate Director Andrej Rotter provides leadership for the Current Topics Workshops. Associate Director Libby Marschall works with the Director on diversity issues. The Associate Directors together with the Senior Associate Director are responsible for arranging the mentoring program for postdoctoral fellows.

The Director of the MBI is Avner Friedman: afriedman@mbi.osu.edu.

The interim Senior Associate Director is David Terman: terman@mbi.osu.edu.

The three Associate Directors are:
Dennis Pearl: dpearl@mbi.osu.edu
Andrej Rotter: arotter@mbi.osu.edu
Libby Marschall: marschall.2@osu.edu

Assistant Director:
Tony Nance: tony@mbi.osu.edu

Mission

The founders and governors of the MBI identified the need for an institute dedicated to the mathematical biosciences. Vigorous programs of research and education foster the growth of an international community of researchers in this new field.

This need stems from the revolutionary advances in basic science and technology including medical imaging, nanoscale bioengineering, and gene expression arrays. The resulting deluge of experimental data has challenged scientists to produce mathematical solutions to analyzing and structuring this data in a meaningful way.

• to foster innovation in the development and application of mathematical, statistical, and computational methods for the solution of significant problems in the biosciences;
• to engage mathematical and biological scientists in the solution of these problems; and
• to expand the community of scholars in mathematical biosciences through education, training, and support of students and researchers.

To support this mission, the MBI will reinforce and build upon existing research efforts in mathematical bioscience and encourage human and intellectual growth in this area. Emphasis year programs, current topics workshops, educational programs, and sponsored research projects are the structure under which these goals will be achieved.