Figure 1. Different Perspectives of Immunology Researchers.

Generally, immunologists seek to understand the role of immune system in health and disease, focusing on how genetic, epigenetic, and environmental variations affect immune function and influence individual disease expression and response to treatment. Data-driven modelers seek to map predictive relationships between multiple data variables and disease in individuals, reconstructing and examining how molecular and celluar networks change in health and disease. Mechanistic modelers seek to define how a defined set of molecular and cellular interactions can lead to complex outcomes in health and immunological disease. This latter group utilizes abstractions of biological mechanisms encoded into computational models, and seek to define how diverse, complex health and disease phenotypes emerge from a defined set of immune interactions, set in motion by defined initial biological conditions.