Mathematical Biology Group

Research:

Emerging research within the Department of Mathematical Sciences in Biology is interdisciplinary with ongoing collaborations in the areas of Neuroscience, Systems Physiology and Evolutionary Genetics. The related mathematical research is in ordinary and partial differential equations as well as dynamical systems, perturbation analysis and scientific computation.

People:

Faculty:

  • Donald A. French has two ongoing collaborations in Neuroscience. He is building a computational model of the synchronized bursting in networks of cultured cortical neurons with Eric Gruenstein. He is also investigating ion channel distributions in olfactory cilia with Steve Kleene. (french@math.uc.edu)
  • Sookkyung Lim uses scientific computation to study aortic aneurysms and motile behavior of bacteria such as E. Coli (limsk@math.uc.edu).
  • Tony Leung looks at predator-prey partial differential equation models. (Anthony.Leung@UC.EDU)
  • Steve Pelikan works on the genetics and geometry (spatial structure)of small populations and estimating the origins of hybrids in collaboration with Steve Rogstadt from Biology. He has also done research in Bioinformatics at P & G. (Steve.Pelikan@UC.Edu)

    Graduate Students:

  • Zeynep Teymuroglu finished her thesis integro-differential equation models for the spread of alcohol abuse. She graduated in June 2008.
  • Jiyeon Oh finished her PhD thesis under Dr. French in May 2005. Her research was on exponential Euler approximation techniques in Neuroscience.
  • Dorjsuren Badamdorj finished his thesis in August 2006. The research was on the determination of CNG and Cl(Ca) channel distributions in olfactory cilia using computational and analytical techniques. He now has a visiting position at the University of Delaware.
  • Mauricio Osorio is working on meshfree numerical methods for fluids problems with immersed structures.
  • Kristen Fox, Longla Martial, Miguel Caciedo and Angelica Caciedo are beginning students who have expressed interest in this field.

    Undergraduates:

  • Sabrina Blakeman was a WISE/REU undergraduate in the Summer of 2003. She worked on parameter search techniques in Neuroscience.
    The Department of Mathematical Sciences also has a strong statistics program and many of the researchers have interests in the biosciences. Both Seongho Song and Xiaodong Lin have already published in biology journals.

    Math-Biology Seminar:

    This Autumn we have the special Taft Research Seminar on Biofilms . Nick Cogan is a visiting scholar from Florida State University.

    In 2008-9 we had talks by Don French (Integro-differential equations models for the spread of alcoholism), Sookkyung Lim (Immersed boundary methods), Mauricio Osorio (Meshfree numerical methods), Dong Qian (Discontinuous Galerkin methods), Kumar Vemganti (Modeling errors), David Rogers (Bayesian methods), Hem Raj Joshi (Disease spread), and Anthony Leung (Optimization).

    In 2007-8 we had several distinguished speakers; they were Nick Cogan, Steven Cox and Jim Keener .

    In 2006-7 we had a wide range of interdisciplinary talks including ones by Tom Beck (Chemistry) on the Realization of Ion Channel Pathways, Jeff Johnson (Biomedical Engineering) on Computational Neuroscience, Ruxandra Dima (Chemistry) on Computational Biocheminformatics, George Stan (Chemistry) on Computational biophysical chemistry and bioinformatics, Frank Pinski (Physics) on Free Energy Landscapes, and Shaaban Abdallah (Aerospace Engineering) .

    PhD in Mathematics with emphasis in Mathematical Biology

    PhD graduate students interested in doing PhD research in Mathematical Biology need to fulfill the usual requirements for a PhD in mathematics (see the department handbook at the graduate studies webpage for details). Their curriculum would have an emphasis in applied mathematics and biology. Their research would typically be interdisciplinary with at least one faculty member from a biology or related department involved.