Section: Scientific Foundations

Introduction

The dynamics of complex physical or biophysical phenomena involving many particles, including biological cells - which can be seen as active particles -, can be represented efficiently either by explicitly considering the behaviour of each particle individually or by Partial Differential Equations which, under certain hypotheses, represent averages of large systems of particles.

Since the XIX^th century this formalism has shown its efficiency and ability to explain both qualitative and quantitative behaviours. The knowledge that has been gathered on such physical models, on algorithms for solving them on computers, on industrial implementation, opens the hope for success when dealing with life sciences also. This is one of the main goals of BANG. At small spatial scales the partial differential equation models are complemented by agent-based models which permit to capture phenomena on the spatial scale of the individual matter components.