Mathematical Biology and Healthcare

Mathematical biology illustration

Mathematical Biology and Healthcare research in Birmingham is strongly integrated with experimental research, medicine and healthcare.

The main focus of mathematical biology research in Birmingham is multiscale modelling of a variety of biological and medical systems, areas of interest including, but not limited to:

  • Mechanical effects in plant growth
  • Fluid dynamics of sperm motility, and symmetry breaking in embryonic development
  • Models of cancer and inflammation
  • The role of mechanical anisotropy in tissue formation
  • Bacterial gene regulation and its role in disease
  • Antibiotic resistance and novel drug development
  • Mathematical modelling in endocrinology and adrenal disease
  • Industrial and biomedical applications of transversely isotropic fluids

A list of recent grants obtained by the Group can be found on the grants page. Previous PhD students in the Mathematical Biology Group, together with their theses, can be found on the previous PhD students page. The members of the group, and a brief description of their research interests, are given below.

Head of Mathematical Biology Group

Professor David Smith

Professor David Smith

Professor of Applied Mathematics

Professor Smith's interests are microscale biological fluid dynamics, especially in fertility, health and disease. Examples including sperm motiliy, cilia driven flow, mucus layers in lungs and digestive tract, and the fluid mechanics of biopolymers. He works with computational methods for modelling viscous flows, especially boundary integral methods, with applications in medicine and biology.

Academic Staff

Dr James Andrews

Dr James Andrews

Lecturer

Dr Andrews is a researcher applying mathematical and computational techniques to problems in applied mathematics. He works on microfluidics, chemically reacting systems with a focus on fuel cells and their systems, time series, spatial dynamics and AI, sensor and device design and manufacture, numerical methods for PDEs, the sense of touch, and social behaviour modelling and policy design.

Dr Hong Duong

Dr Hong Duong

Associate Professor

Dr Duong's research interests lie in the intersections of analysis and applied probability. Most of his research is inspired from applications in molecular dynamics, material sciences and biological systems.

Professor Rosemary Dyson

Professor Rosemary Dyson

Professor in Applied Mathematics

Professor Dyson's research is in mathematical modelling; biomechanics; thin liquid films; fibre-reinforced fluids.

Dr Meurig Thomas Gallagher

Dr Meurig Thomas Gallagher

Assistant Professor
Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) Research Person Responsible (Centre #0209)

Dr Gallagher's research interests are in: image analysis of human sperm motility; Biological fluid dynamics; Asymptotic and numerical methods to investigate problems in fluid mechanics; Mathematical modelling of fluid structure interaction; Numerical modelling of stability of Non-Newtonian fluids.

Dr Sara Jabbari

Dr Sara Jabbari

Reader in Mathematical Biology

Dr Jabbari's research focuses on mathematical modelling, particularly applied to biological systems, e.g. gene regulation networks, and the use of asymptotic methods to analyse and simplify mathematical models.

Dr Samuel Johnson

Dr Samuel Johnson

Associate Professor in Applied Mathematics

Dr Johnson's research focuses on complex systems, and in particular on the relationship between structure and dynamics. Many of the questions his work addresses relate to ecology, neuroscience or society.

Dr Galane Luo

Dr Galane Luo

Lecturer in Industrial and Interdisciplinary Applied Mathematics

Dr Luo's research interests are in mathematical plant science, complex systems, condensed matter, polaron theory and theoretical biophysics.

Dr Mabel Rajendran

Dr Mabel Rajendran

Assistant Professor

Dr Rajendran's research interests include mathematical analysis of models arising in the realms of biology and engineering. She specifically focuses on systems involving ordinary/partial differential equations that are nonlinear, coupled and involving nonlocal operators and/or noise perturbations.

Professor Fabian Spill

Professor Fabian Spill

Professor of Applied Mathematics
UKRI Future Leaders Fellow

Professor Spill's research is centred on aspects of Mathematical Biology. From the mathematical side he is interested in applications of stochastic models and various differential equations, from ODEs to coupled bulk-surface reaction-diffusion systems. From the application side, he is interested in cancer biology, mechanobiology, and the dynamic interplay of cells and their microenvironment.

Dr Panayiota Touloupou

Dr Panayiota Touloupou

Associate Professor in Mathematics and Statistics

Dr Touloupou's research is concerned with mathematical modelling of infectious diseases and the development of novel statistical methods needed for model fitting and model selection.

Dr David Tourigny

Dr David Tourigny

Birmingham Fellow

Dr Tourigny has an interdisciplinary background in experimental, mathematical and computational biology. His research interests include the development and application of computational approaches to understand single-cell metabolism, and particularly the role of metabolic heterogeneity in cancer.

Dr Alexandra Tzella

Dr Alexandra Tzella

Associate Professor in Applied Mathematics

Dr Tzella's work studies how tracers (e.g. pollutants) evolve in idealised fluid and porous flows. This uses mathematical and computational methods to develop models that provide better descriptions and predictions of the concentrations in various situations, with emphasis on environmental issues like the distribution of plankton species in the ocean and contaminants in groundwater aquifers.

PhD Students

Local active research collaborations include:

  • University of Birmingham Centre for Computational Biology
  • Centre for Systems Modelling and Quantitative Biomedicine
  • Centre for Human Reproductive Science at Birmingham's Women's Hospital
  • Institute for Metabolism and Systems Research
  • Institute of Microbiology
  • Infection Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy
  • Linear Diagnostics Ltd

Collaborations further afield include:

  • Centre for Plant Integrative Biology, Nottingham
  • School of Medicine and Centre for Biomolecular Sciences
  • Nottingham Centre for Mathematical Biology
  • Oxford Department of Computing Science
  • Groningen, Netherlands School of Mathematical Sciences
  • Adelaide National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis
  • Tennessee Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal Proctor and Gamble UK Fluids Network Multiscale Biology Network