Mathematical Biology

Topics of research include biological pattern formation, self-organisation and collective behaviour in biology, 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 the treatment of cerebrovascular abnormalities are further areas of study. In addition, the fluid mechanical study of coated bubbles is useful in the development of microbubble contrast agents for ultrasound imaging. Fluid mechanical studies of lower urinary tract have relevance to incontinence research.

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.

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.

The Mathematical Biology group at UCL runs a weekly seminar on Wednesdays during term time which is regularly attended by researchers from across UCL.

Group Members

Dr Masoud Ahmadi, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Prof Steve Baigent, Professor of Applied Mathematics
Dr Freya Bull, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr Vijai Anand Dharmalingam, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr Carina Dunlop, Associate Professor in Applied Mathematics
Dr Rosemary Harris, Associate Professor in Applied Mathematics
Dr Claudia Miranda, Lecturer (Teaching) in Mathematics
Dr David Morselli, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr Cara Neal, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr Andrew Nugent, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Prof Nick Ovenden, Professor of Applied Mathematics
Prof Karen Page, Professor of Mathematical Biology
Dr Philip Pearce, Associate Professor
Dr Gunnar Peng, Lecturer in Applied Mathematics
Dr Andrei Sontag, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr Benjamin Walker, Lecturer in Applied Mathematics
Dr Edwina Yeo, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Prof Alexey Zaikin, Chair in Applied Mathematics and Computational Biomedicine