This is a project with Francesco Puccioni, Paul Piho and Philipp Thomas.

Motivation

Branching processes are used to describe the stochastic evolution of populations such as cells. Yet, there are two apsects of reality that are challenging to incorporate: 1) cells/humans need to mature before they can reproduce which means that individuals need to be modelled with an intrinsic age. 2) External conditions (food,light,seasons,…) influence reproduction. Division and death rates need to be time-dependent.

How can this be solved? We answer this in our upcoming publication.