Chalenges and Opportunities in Mathematical and Theoretical Biology and Medicine: Foreword to Volume 2 (2013) of Biomath

The challenges faced today at the interface of the computational, life, social, mathematical and data sciences expand as the world's population approaches the seven billion mark. Today, we are asked to address questions over multiple temporal and spatial scales as well as across various levels of organization. In the process, the world has placed mathematical scientists, broadly defined to include computational, computer, statistics and data science experts, at the heart of trans-disciplinary and interdisciplinary efforts aimed primarily at assessing arguably the most important technical challenge of our times, namely, how to model and quantify uncertainty. Twenty first century research is driven to a great extent by questions involving the study of the dynamics of biological process. And so, we have been forced to account for the impact of social systems, bringing the role of human-decisions to the forefront of most efforts to put the power of the quantitative sciences into the hands of policy and decision makers. The challenges faced by mathematical scientist include ..