Member Spotlight: Jonathan Forde
Current Position: Professor, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Research Interest: How do we really decide which features are appropriate to include in a model, and which should be left out?
Favorite Immune Cell: CD8+ T cell
What inspired you to study mathematical immunology? How did you discover mathematical immunology?
I grew into the study of mathematical immunology gradually over time. I started graduate school studying pure mathematics, switching to applied in my third year. So, I first came to appreciate dynamical systems, and as I learned more about within-host disease modeling, the mathematical immunology became more and more relevant. As I learned about the complexity of the immune system, it seemed that interesting questions kept arising, and the answers were often unknown. Wanting to unravel some of those mysteries is what inspires me in mathematical modeling, and mathematical immunology seems like a perfect combination of interesting questions and meaningful applications.
What are your research interests?
My research interest is in modeling viral infections and their interactions with the immune system. My focus has mostly been on HIV and various forms of viral hepatitis. I am interested in what differentiates acute infections from chronic infections, and how chronic infections feed back on the immune system on medium and long time scales.
I am also very interested in what you might call the art of model building. How do we really decide which features are appropriate to include in a model, and which should be left out? I also want to understand, in a fundamental way, how the mechanisms we build into our differential equation models combine together to generate new and often unexpected dynamical phenomena. I think that a better understanding of the interactions of the building blocks of our models is more important than ever, as models are getting more complex and AI is starting to play a role in model creation and analysis.
Favorite immune cell to model, and why?
My favorite immune cell to model is the CD8+ T cell. They have so much going on! There is differentiation and activation, multiple pathways to induce apoptosis in infected cells, and even noncytolytic effects through cytokines. Plus, they are relevant for many viral infections, so they show up in lots of models.
If you could unravel any mystery of the immune system, what would it be?
I would like to better understand the mechanisms underlying immune regulation and exhaustion in chronic infections. The idea of subsystems operating on different time scales and needing to balance different objectives is fascinating, and I think that the dynamics of chronic infections are under-explored in comparison to acute infection.
How did you choose your career path?
It seems that ever since I started taking mathematics seriously (in college) I knew I would pursue a career in academia. It always just seemed to fit my personality in ways that industry would not. The harder decision was the type of academic career I would pursue. As a postdoc, it became clear to me that in addition to research, teaching was something that I found deeply meaningful. I wanted to find a career path that could combine teaching and research, and where both would be valued equally. That’s why I decided to build a career at a liberal arts college. For me, it was absolutely the right decision, and I hope that young academics will think about whether it might be the right path for them as well.