Background

MOSIMBIO has its origins in the fruitful collaboration of investigators studying the behaviour of liquids with techniques typically used by physics in solving N-bodies problems (Monte Carlo methods and Molecular Dynamics) with researchers that worked on the analysis of population dynamics in the framework of theoretical ecology.

 

The IbM approach allowed combining the techniques and experience from both disciplines: the biological rules governing the individuals could be framed with the physical laws that also describe their local environment, and the collective outcome could be drawn from the statistical treatment of the population ensemble.

 

This methodology provided a way to address questions that could not be covered otherwise, such as understanding the effect of the statistical distribution of individual traits among the population on the system dynamics, or proposing mechanisms for the emergence of coordinated global behaviours from the local individual interactions and including randomness.