Lukas Gustafsson: An introduction to chemical reaction networks

This pre-colloquium is aimed to give a light introduction to the area of Chemical Reaction Networks (CRN) and explain the type of questions that are studied. A CRN models how the concentrations of different species vary over time in a chemical solution as they react with each other in accordance with a directed graph. Extra assumptions such as ‘mass action kinematics’ add weights to the edges of the graph and yield a polynomial dynamical system that models the concentrations of the different species. We introduce these concepts, give examples of such networks, and define the questions one might ask about such a system. 

This talk precedes Elisenda Feliu's colloquium talk  on “Positive solutions of parametric polynomial systems and biochemical reaction networks” and is accessible to a broad audience (master and PhD students).