I will present a distillation of my experience during my recent semester-long visit to the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications during their special year on "Mathematics of Molecular and Cellular Biology." One of my objectives is to highlight a few mathematical threads that play prominent roles in current questions regarding microbiology. I will also discuss some anecdotes and observations regarding persistent challenges as well as some hopeful developments in the interdisciplinary cooperation between mathematicians and biologists. With the remaining time, I will briefly present some personal research (in collaboration with Shekhar Garde (biochemical engineering) and former graduate student Adnan Khan (now at Lahore)) on developing stochastic models for the behavior of water molecules near the surface of a solute (such as a protein) as part of an effort to accelerate molecular dynamics simulations.

This talk is intended to be broadly accessible and to help provide some general perspectives to students, postdocs, and interested faculty.