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The Joy of Why: How Can Math Help Beat Cancer?

Quanta Magazine’s The Joy of Why is a special addition to WCNY Community FM. It’s hosted by Cornell mathematician Steven Strogatz, and senior produced by Genevieve Sponsler (also a producer here at WCNY Community FM). Steve and his co-host, astrophysicist Janna Levin, take turns at the mic, interview leading researchers about the great scientific and mathematical questions of our time.

In this episode: When we think about medicine’s war on cancer, treatments such as surgery, radiation and chemotherapy spring to mind first. Now there is another potential weapon for defeating tumors: statistics and mathematical models that can optimize the selection, combination or timing of treatment. Building and feeding these models requires accounting for the complexity of the body, and recognizing that cancer cells are constantly evolving.

Strogatz hears from Franziska Michor, a computational biologist, about how our understanding of evolutionary dynamics is being used to devise new anticancer therapies.

Listen to This Podcast, and more episodes of The Joy of Why

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