Having launched
my research group in the Department of Mathematics at City St George's, University of London (we are recruiting at all levels--get in touch if you're interested!), I want to take a moment to reflect on our lab's approach to mathematical oncology.
We'll frame our discussion through the lens of Timothy Gowers' essay
"The Two Cultures of Mathematics," a wonderful piece in which Gowers distinguishes between two types of mathematicians: problem solvers and theory builders. The former believe that the purpose of understanding mathematics is to solve problems, whereas the latter believe that the purpose of solving problems is to understand mathematics. Of course, this is a huge oversimplification--few believe that solving problems that don't improve our understanding of mathematics or devising a theory that doesn't actually do anything are worthwhile endeavors. Nevertheless, the classification is a useful framework to understand the motivations of researchers and their modes of inquiry.
For better or worse, the world of cancer is almost exclusively populated by problem solvers. This is also true of those residing in the lands of mathematical and computational oncology--few dare to ask the fundamental questions or aim to construct unifying theoretical frameworks. Instead, most find joy in supporting experimental and clinical colleagues by, e.g., optimizing treatment protocols, identifying yet another upregulated gene in an important oncological process, or simulating intricate in silico experiments that would be infeasible to perform in the lab. Although this work is important, has translational impact, and is attractive to funding bodies, for the theory builders among us, it remains intellectually unsatisfying.
The Bukkuri lab strongly leans towards theory building--we are interested in concrete problems insofar as they help reveal deep insights into the way the world works. We are proponents of consilience and transdisciplinarity, believing that knowledge across all disciplines exists on a single intellectual landscape--a landscape that our cumulative work attempts to illuminate. In our work, we behave as intellectual flâneurs, drifting across this landscape in an attempt to identify hidden structures underlying seemingly disparate fields. We then use philosophical deliberation to sharpen, refine, and forge these connections. To guard against the dangers of intellectual nomadism, we use mathematical modeling to ground our work in cancer, a terrific model organism for exploring many of the biosocial phenomena that interest us most. Working with empirical colleagues, we then test our predictions to ensure that we haven't (yet) gone totally insane.
Cool philosophy bro, but what are you actually working on these days? We have three main research lines.
- Cancer evolutionary ecology: We are interested in pushing the frontiers of life history theory, modern coexistence theory, community ecology, and multilevel selection, and applying these concepts to understand and combat intratumoral heterogeneity and drug resistance via eco-evolutionary double binds.
- Cancer social science: We are drawing on ideas from linguistics, economics, criminology, political science, anthropology, and sociology to develop a novel research paradigm for understanding and treating cancer. The main question we seek to address here is: "How do deviant actors arise and interact with external factors to promote the collapse of communication networks in their society, thereby facilitating their expansion?"
- Evo-evolutionary theory: Often, the problems in our cancer evolutionary ecology and cancer social science programs require novel theoretical tools. Thus far, our lab has mostly worked on developing methods to model eco-evolutionary dynamics in structured populations, but we're also interested in evolution in linked multi-trait systems, multi-level selection, and multi-agent evolutionary signaling games.
Cancer remains a profoundly complex problem, one that has evaded even the most brilliant minds for centuries. As such, novel perspectives and paradigms are urgently needed to make meaningful progress. We hope that our work, in some small way, contributes to this endeavor. If all else fails, at least we would've had a blast along the way and hopefully inspired smarter, younger minds to carry the torch forward for generations to come.