Mathematical and theoretical biology, or biomathematics, is a branch of biology which employs theoretical analysis, mathematical models and abstractions of living organisms to investigate the principles that govern the structure, development and behavior of the systems, as opposed to experimental biology which deals with the conduction of experiments to test scientific theories. The field is sometimes called mathematical biology or biomathematics to stress the mathematical side, or theoretical biology to stress the biological side. Theoretical biology focuses more on the development of theoretical principles for biology while mathematical biology focuses on the use of mathematical tools to study biological systems, even though the two terms are sometimes interchanged.
David J. Gavaghan is Professor of Computational Biology in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford. He is also the director of the Life Sciences Interface Doctoral Training Centre, Principal Investigator of the Integrative Biology project and Research Fellow in Mathematics at New College, Oxford.
Fiona Watt, is a British scientist who is internationally known for her contributions to the field of stem cell biology. In the 1980s, when the field was in its infancy, she highlighted key characteristics of stem cells and their environment that laid the foundation for much present day research.
Dame Angela Ruth McLean is professor of mathematical biology in the Department of Biology, University of Oxford, and Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government.
Andrea Hilary Brand is the Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Biology and a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. She heads a lab investigating nervous system development at the Gurdon Institute and the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience. She developed the GAL4/UAS system with Norbert Perrimon which has been described as “a fly geneticist's Swiss army knife”.
Leah Edelstein-Keshet is an Israeli-Canadian mathematical biologist.
Philip Kumar Maini is a Northern Irish mathematician. Since 1998, he has been the Professor of Mathematical Biology at the University of Oxford and is the director of the Wolfson Centre for Mathematical Biology in the Mathematical Institute.
Elizabeth Jane Robertson is a British developmental biologist based at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford. She is Professor of Developmental Biology at Oxford and a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow. She is best known for her pioneering work in developmental genetics, showing that genetic mutations could be introduced into the mouse germ line by using genetically altered embryonic stem cells. This discovery opened up a major field of experimentation for biologists and clinicians.
Benjamin Guy Davis is a British chemist who is Professor of Chemical biology in the Department of Pharmacology and a member of the Faculty in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. He holds the role of Science Director for Next Generation Chemistry (2019-2024) and Deputy Director (2020-) at the Rosalind Franklin Institute.
Edith Yvonne Jones is a British molecular biologist who is director of the Cancer Research UK Receptor Structure Research Group at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. She is widely known for her research on the molecular biology of cell surface receptors and signalling complexes.
Melissa Helen Little is an Australian scientist and academic who has served as director of Cell Biology at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute since 2019. She is also a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne, and Program Leader of Stem Cells Australia. In January 2022, she became CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine reNEW, an international stem cell research center based at University of Copenhagen, and a collaboration between the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Australia, and Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands.
Xin Lu is a Professor of Cancer Biology and Director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at the University of Oxford. She is known for her discovery of and research on the ASPP family of proteins.
Judy Hirst is a British scientist specialising in mitochondrial biology. She is Director of the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit at the University of Cambridge.
Eleanor Phoebe Jane Stride is a Professor of Biomaterials at St Catherine's College, Oxford. Stride engineers drug delivery systems using carefully designed microbubbles and studies how they can be used in diagnostics.
Helen Irene McShane is a British infectious disease physician and a professor of vaccinology, in the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, where she has led the tuberculosis vaccine research group since 2001. She is senior research fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford.
Rebecca Julia Shipley is a British mathematician and professor of healthcare engineering at University College London (UCL). She is director of the UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering, co-director of the UCL Centre for Nerve Engineering and Vice Dean (Health) for the UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences. She is also co-director of the UCL CHIMERA Research Hub with Prof Christina Pagel and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology.
Kathryn Rachel Ayscough is a professor of molecular cell biology and head of the department of biomedical science at the University of Sheffield. She was awarded the 2002 Society for Experimental Biology President's Medal. Her research investigates the role of the actin cytoskeleton in membrane trafficking and cell organisation.
Stacey Finley is the Nichole A. and Thuan Q. Pham Professor and associate professor of chemical engineering and materials science, and quantitative and computational biology at the University of Southern California. Finley has a joint appointment in the department of chemical engineering and materials science, and she is a member of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Finley is also a standing member of the MABS Study Section at NIH. Her research has been supported by grants from the NSF, NIH, and American Cancer Society.
Irene Miguel-Aliaga is a Spanish-British physiologist who is Professor of Genetics and Physiology at Imperial College London. Her research investigates the plasticity of adult organs, and why certain organs change shape in response to environmental changes. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2022.
Bethan Psaila is a physician-scientist known for work in hematopoiesis, megakaryocyte/platelet biology and myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs). She is an Associate Professor of Hematology at the University of Oxford, a Cancer Research UK funded Senior Fellow, and a Senior Fellow of New College. In 2021, she co-founded Alethiomics, a drug-discovery company.
