News

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.