News
Ph.D. Dissertation Defense Scheduled
Posted by Paul Macklin
25 January 2007 at 11:50 AM PST (UTC +?)
My advancement to Ph.D. dissertation is scheduled! The details:
- Date: Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
- Time: 2:00pm to 4:00pm
- Room: MSTB 254
- Topic: Nonlinear Simulation of Cancer / Computational Oncology
- Committee:
- Natalia Komarova (Mathematics)
- John Lowengrub (Mathematics, chair)
- Hongkai Zhao (Mathematics)
More details to come in a later posting.
JTB Paper Accepted!
Posted by Paul Macklin
8 December 2006 at 12:06 AM PST (UTC +?)
I just got word this week that our microenvironment paper has been accepted to the Journal of Theoretical Biology. I'd like to thank the reviewers for their insightful comments, as they were helpful in strenghtening the paper. We should be receiving proofs around Dec. 28th, which I suppose means the paper will come out in final form in early 2007. Please follow this link to read the most current draft.
Applied for NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship
Posted by Paul Macklin
20 October 2006 at 10:00 AM PDT (UTC +?)
This week, I applied for a NSF mathematical sciences postdoctoral research fellowship, or MSPRF. It was a very educational experience for me, in that the application format was that of a short grant proposal. Regardless of how this turns out, it was a great experience in what shall surely be an integral part of my life as a scientist.
I can't go into too much detail on the proposal itself, but it involves some exciting research on a next-generation tissue-level cancer model. I also got to learn more details on my coming post-doc next year at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, which is closely tied to the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. More to come later. -- Paul
Math Graduate Student Colloquium Off to a Great Start!
Posted by Paul Macklin
12 October 2006 at 12:01 AM PDT (UTC +?)
The MGSC is off to a great start! Timothy Choi gave the first talk, and it was well-attended, with about 25 graduate students present. I'm very excited about the future of the MGSC, and I hope that it develops into a positive, community-building tradition.
Ph.D. Update
Posted by Paul Macklin
11 October 2006 at 9:37 PM PDT (UTC +?)
It's been a long time since I've posted an update on my Ph.D. work. Things are going well! In August, I spent two weeks working with Steven McDougall in Edinburgh on our joint tumor-angiogenesis code. We made great progress, ultimately linking two separate codes with data sharing, etc. The tumor releases pro-angiogenic growth factors that diffusion into the microenvironment and promote / guide angiogenesis. The resulting blood vessels provide nutrient to the growing tumor. This next-generation computational framework includes fully heterogeneous coefficients, which allow us to model the tissue structure and tumor microenvironment in rich detail, as well as investigate some of the functional relationships between the microenvironment and the microphysical parameters. Steven and I met with Sandy Anderson and Mark Chaplain, and we hope to begin work on an exciting paper very, very soon!
As for our joint project with Natalia Komarova, we have finished validating the code by verifying her theoretical results for 1D and mass action tissue invasion, and so now we're moving on to new investigations.
On another note, I've begun writing my dissertation. Part of that process includes learning BibTeX, which has also proven useful in paper revisions. (John and I received our JTB paper reviews, which included a lot of useful comments and suggestions for improvement.) At the moment, a December 2006 graduation is still a possibility, but a March 2007 graduation looks more likely.
