Abstract Over the last decade or so, there has been an increased focus on the appearance of mixed-mode oscillations in a variety of applications, including cell dynamics and the environment. Taking a broad definition of mixed-mode oscillations, the talk will cover a number of biological phenonema that have mixed-mode oscillations as their basis.These include more familiar dynamics related to canards and coherence resonance, as well as new mechanisms appearing in systems with delays and nonsmooth dynamics. We concentrate on applications in which these mixed mode oscillations are in fact noise-induced, and discuss how the fundamental mechanisms in these examples appear broadly. These ideas point to a number of opportunities in transfering ideas between different areas of life sciences, as well as bringing new ideas to biological modeling from other areas of science and engineering.