Modelling for Mathematical Biology

Project ID: 2228cd1401 (You will need this ID for your application)

Under Offer

UCL Lead department: Mathematics

Lead Supervisor: Karen Page

Project Summary:

Topics for research include analysis of global properties of dynamical systems models in ecology, the study of evolutionary games and evolutionary dynamics.

Modelling in biomedicine is another theme. This incorporates multi-scale modelling of the immune system and proteasomal degradation, genetic synthetic engineering, e.g. investigation of synthetic genetic oscillators, especially those with intercell communication, i.e. quorum sensing and the theory of noise-induced phenomena in spatially distributed systems, including applications to bone modelling. Modelling the control of blood circulation in the brain and in the placenta are further areas of study.

Mathematical models of embryonic development are another focus, in particular of the neural tube and neuronal differentiation. These use techniques from dynamical systems to model gene regulation, randomly perturbed dynamical systems to understand the role of noise in patterning and also spatial models of tissue growth and patterning. Pattern formation in living matter and with biochemical signalling spatio-temporal morphogen variations is also an area of active interest.

Use of mechanistic modelling to understand a wide range of emergent physical and biological phenomena in areas including: biological signalling, carbon recycling, cell motility, cryopreservation, decontamination, synthetic biology, and tissue engineering.

Within the systems biology of cancer, aims include using models to understand the process of metastasis, improving early diagnosis and new oncomarkers for women’s cancers, new DNA methylation network measures and new DNA methylation intra-gene measures to improve cancer diagnostics.

There will be close collaboration with biological, medical and experimental groups.