We are in a remarkable era, both in terms of the incredible scientific innovations and progress that are being made, and in terms of the interaction and communication between scientists of traditionally very disparate and distinct disciplines.

One of the unifying themes of mathematical modeling and experimental research in Medicine and the Life Sciences is the elucidation of the underlying biological processes that result in a particular observed phenomenon. Even in the rare cases where the mechanisms are well understood, mathematics is still crucial to explore the consequences of changing various parameters with, for example, a particular treatment strategy - in the case of cancer growth and angiogenesis (with its relation to possible cancer therapy), the number of options rapidly becoming available to practicing oncologists will be overwhelming unless we find a mathematical approach to simulate particular treatment protocols before applying them in practice.

Throughout mathematics, the right sort of problems provide the challenge that lead to the improvement of techniques and development of new methods. This has certainly been true in the case of Mathematics in the Medical Sciences and it is a field that has seen rapid expansion in recent years.. The range of problems tackled now is wide and the literature vast. However, the recent development of many of these areas of "mathematical medicine" has meant that little has filtered through to the senior undergraduate and graduate level curricula. Thus, the role of the Centre will be to develop into a hub (or focus) of a Canada-wide network - to both disseminate knowledge through undergraduate/graduate level courses, seminars, as well as to periodically bring together mathematicians and physicians/medical researchers, to provide "state of the art" summaries in particular fields in addition to identifying possible areas of collaborative research.