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At the end of my third year as a PI at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, and many submissions of large and small grants to support my mathematical oncology group, I am ecstatic to tell you about the R01 that was funded through the NCI (and the MABS study section).

This was my third attempt at this R01 submission that went to MABS - scores went A0: 21%, A1: 17%, rewritten new A0: 10% (funded through magic of ESI thank you @NIHFunding) #persistence

The aims, which I will post at the bottom in full, go something like this:

Together with @AndriyMarusyk our 1st aim will be to see if we can use @kaznatcheev‘s evolutionary game assay in a pair wise fashion to predict three strategy dynamics in vitro. (n.b. I didn't manage to get a fundable score until after that paper was published... even with the whole paper on biorxiv for over a year...)


2nd aim will be to study commonalities in drug sensitivity/resistance - over a long (well - longish, not @RELenski long) term evolution experiment - how do sensitivities change and can we ID them? This will support super ⭐️ @CWRUSOM MSTP @ScarboroughJess -w/ help from @n8pennell. (this aim supported by our own work in E. coli).

3rd aim will probe the evolutionary stability (in space (as we've done before on graphs) and time) of the ecological dynamics we measure in our game assays. Implementing replicator-mutator dynamics in collab w/ @stevenstrogatz - we’ll see how these games change through time. (h/t to @kaznatcheev for the idea!)

This also means that we are looking for someone to join the team... specifically a postdoc with an interest in ecology and evolution and a desire to do some modeling and in vitro experiments. Cancer experience is NOT required, kindness and inclusivity are. Please spread the word or check out the lab website and get in touch if interested by email.

For some more details on the struggles involved in getting here, you can read a longer form version of this post on Jake’s personal blog. As promised, here is the full aims page: