Philip Murray, Centre for Mathematical Biology, Oxford University

will speak on

Applying mathematical models to biological systems: from embryo development to tumour growth

Time: 2:15PM
Date: Thu 7th April 2011
Location: Mathematical Sciences Seminar Room [map]

Further information

Abstract: The Centre for Mathematical Biology (CMB) at the University of Oxford is part of the
Mathematical Institute and was established in 1983 as the first centre of its kind in
Britain. There is a rich tradition within the group of modelling a variety of biological
problems and in the first part of my talk I will very briefly summarise some of the
work that is currently been undertaken.

I will then focus specifically on two areas on my own research. Firstly, I will
introduce a patterning process called somitogenesis that arises during embryo
development. I will present an outline of the current experimental understanding
and motivate the need for mathematical modelling. Subsequently I will demonstrate
how the underlying patterning dynamics can be described using Burgers’ equation.
Our model will be validated against data from a range of species and I will discuss
how it can be further tested against experiment.

In the third part of the talk I will discuss how mathematical models can be used to
model tumour growth. One of the problems that arise in this field is that
experimental data is being increasingly generated at the discrete, cellular level of
description but that when dealing with large numbers of cells it is preferable to
describe a cell population as a continuum. I will investigate and discuss the merits
of methods for moving from discrete to continuum descriptions of cell dynamics.

(This talk is part of the Applied and Computational Mathematics series.)

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