2014 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships Announced

• • • • Alberto Soto for "The Zebrafish Visual System: Mathematical Modeling and Experimentation"

Mentor: John Lowengrub's (Department of Mathematics)

• • • • Daniel Quang for "A Machine Learning Approach for Inferring Gene Regulatory Grammar",

Mentor: Xiaohui Xie (Department of Computer Science)

• • • • Chris Rackauckas for "Early-Warning Signs of Critical Transitions in Cell Lineage Dynamics"

(1^st year MCB graduate student researcher; Mentor: Qing Nie).

John Lowengrub receives prestigious Julian Cole Lecturer Award

Congratualtions to Professor John Lownegrub on being named the Julian Cole Lecturer for 2014 by the Society for Industrial and Apllied Mathematics (SIAM).

The Julian Cole Lecturer award is given every four years for an outstanding contribution to the mathematical charactrerization and solution of a challenging problem in the physical or biological sciences, or in engineering. John is being recognized for his "seminal contributions to fluid dynamics, materials sciene, and computational biology through the development of mathematical models, computational methods, and numerical simulations of free-boundary problems and tumor growth."

The Julian Cole Lecture and awards luncheon will be hosted at the plenary session of the 2014 SIAM Annual Meeting on July 10, 2014 in Chicago, Illinois.

High-school student Kevin Lee wins 2nd Place at the 2014 Intel STS Finalist

Congratulations to University High School student Kevin Lee from Ivine on winning 2nd Place at the national 2014 Intel Science Talent Search (STS) competition for his project entitled "Electromechanical modeling of the heart in moving domains using the phase-field method." Kevin was mentored by UCI professor John Lowengrub (CCBS/Math/BME/ChEMS). He will receive a $75,000 scholarship.

Kevin's project focuses on the development of a new theory of the heartbeat through a system of partial differential equations. Cardiac arrhythmias are the leading cause of death in the industrialized world but are not well-understood due to difficulties in linking the physical beating motion of the heart with the propagation of electric signals, and vice versa.

This work successfully couples the mechanical and electrical dynamics and develops an algorithm that enables much more efficient simulations of the heartbeat than those in use today. The added insights from the model promise to improve our understanding of fatal heart conditions and ultimately aid in their treatment and prevention.

Article of the Month: Noise Attenuation

This month's featured research paper is the cover article published by Meng Chen, Liming Wang, Chang C. Liu and Qing Nie from UCI in the October issue of ACS Synthetic Biology entitled: "Noise Attenuation in the ON and OFF States of Biological Switches." The paper describes a new theory for attenutating noise in biological systems. In the accompany- ing podcast Professor Nie discusses the paper's findings and impact.

News - September 30, 2013