Prof. Henrik Flyvbjerg, Technical University of Denmark

The "body-language" of cells on the move in a given environment speaks about the cells and their environment.  To read this language, we must first characterize it.  Models and their parameters do that, qualitatively and quantitatively.  I  sketch how a systematic analysis  of experimental  trajectories yields cell-type-specific motility models in the form of stochastic differential equations.  

With a model at hand, the next problem is how to fit the model's description of continuous motion to the discrete time-series of positions that make up experimental trajectories.  The challenge is discreteness and experimental errors on positions.  This is a general problem, encountered also in, e.g., the study of Brownian motion of individual particles with well-known theories.  I describe  some pitfalls and techniques that avoid them.