Dr Meurig Thomas Gallagher FHEA

Dr Meurig Gallagher

School of Mathematics
Assistant Professor
Theme Lead, Endocrinology, Metabolism & Reproduction, SMQB

Contact details

Email
m.t.gallagher@bham.ac.uk
Twitter
@MeurigGallagher
View my research portal
Address
Centre for Systems Modelling and Quantitative Biomedicine (SMQB)
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
New technique will help experts make heads or tails of male fertility

Dr Meurig Thomas Gallagher is an Assistant Professor in the Centre for Systems Modelling and Quantitative Biomedicine; a post he holds jointly across Mathematics, Computer Science, and the Institute of Metabolism and Systems Research.

Meurig is a truly interdisciplinary researcher who integrates mathematical modelling and software with experimental methods to create new diagnostics and treatments for male infertility, and to tackle wider healthcare applications. 

The main focus of Meurig’s research revolves around the creation and development of the software package FAST (Flagellar Analysis and Sperm Tracking, www.flagellarcapture.com), a tool that enables rapid, affordable analysis of the moving flagellum of the sperm cell. In this, Meurig works alongside the Centre for Human Reproductive Science, Birmingham Women’s Hospital (Lead Prof. Jackson Kirkman-Brown MBE), and close collaborator Prof. Dave Smith. For his work developing FAST, Meurig was awarded the Iwan Lewis Jones Young Scientist Prize (British Andrology Society 2018).

Meurig’s wider interests include the development of computational tools for simulations of microscale fluid dynamics – specifically those targeted at non-computationally expert end-users – and how mathematical modelling can be used to extract informative and accurate information from biomedical and clinical imaging data sets.

Qualifications

  • Iwan Lewis Jones Young Scientist Prize, 2018
  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, 2018
  • PhD Applied Mathematics, University of Birmingham, 2015
  • MMath Applied Mathematics, University of Nottingham, 2011

Teaching

Semester 1

LH/LM Advanced Mathematical Modelling

Postgraduate supervision

www.findaphd.com/phds/projectdetails.aspx?PJID=144180

www.findaphd.com/phds/projectdetails.aspx?PJID=144179

Other activities

  • Meurig's research has been featured in both the New Scientist and BNL Radio 
  • Member of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.
  • Passionate about the dissemination of his work, and was lucky enough to be a finalist in the STEM4Britain 2018 competition
  • Meurig has led the image-analysis portion of a team who designed and installed the MICROBOTS: The future of Healthcare exhibit at the ThinkTank science museum in Birmingham, come have a visit, you’ll find us in the Futures Gallery!

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Gallagher, MT, Kirkman-Brown, J & Smith, D 2023, 'Axonemal regulation by curvature explains sperm flagellar waveform modulation', PNAS nexus, vol. 2, no. 3, pgad072. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad072

Bisconti, M, Leroy, B, Gallagher, MT, Senet, C, Martinet, B, Arcadia, V, Wattiez, R, Kirkman-Brown, J, Simon, J-F & Hennebert, E 2022, 'The ribosome inhibitor chloramphenicol induces motility deficits in human spermatozoa: a proteomic approach identifies potentially involved proteins', Frontiers in cell and developmental biology, vol. 10, 965076. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcell.2022.965076

Gallagher, MT & Smith, D 2021, 'The art of coarse Stokes: Richardson extrapolation improves the accuracy and efficiency of the method of regularized stokeslets', Royal Society Open Science, vol. 8, no. 5, 210108. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.210108

Smith, D, Gallagher, MT, Schuech, R & Montenegro-Johnson, T 2021, 'The role of the double-layer potential in regularised stokeslet models of self-propulsion', Fluids, vol. 6, no. 11, 411. https://doi.org/10.3390/fluids6110411

Neal, C, Hall-McNair, A, Kirkman-Brown, J, Smith, D & Gallagher, MT 2020, 'Doing more with less: the flagellar end piece enhances the propulsive effectiveness of spermatozoa', Physical Review Fluids, vol. 5, no. 7, 073101 . https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.5.073101

Gallagher, MT & Smith, D 2020, 'Passively parallel regularized stokeslets', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, vol. 378, no. 2179, 20190528. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2019.0528

Gallagher, MT, Montenegro-Johnson, T & Smith, D 2020, 'Simulations of particle tracking in the oligociliated mouse node and implications for left-right symmetry breaking mechanics', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, vol. 375, no. 1792, 20190161. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0161

Hall-McNair, A, Montenegro-Johnson, T, Gadêlha, H, Smith, D & Gallagher, MT 2019, 'Efficient implementation of elastohydrodynamics via integral operators', Physical Review Fluids, vol. 4, no. 11, 113101, pp. 113101-1 - 113101-24. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.4.113101

Gallagher, MT, Wain, R, Dari, S, Whitty, J & Smith, D 2019, 'Non-identifiability of parameters for a class of shear-thinning rheological models, with implications for haematological fluid dynamics', Journal of Biomechanics, vol. 85, pp. 230-238. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbiomech.2019.01.036

Gallagher, MT, Cupples, G, Ooi, EH, Kirkman-Brown, J & Smith, D 2019, 'Rapid sperm capture: High-throughput flagellar waveform analysis', Human Reproduction, vol. 34, no. 7, pp. 1173–1185. https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/dez056

Gallagher, MT, Choudhuri, D & Smith, D 2019, 'Sharp quadrature error bounds for the nearest-neighbor discretization of the regularized stokeslet boundary integral equation', SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, vol. 41, no. 1, pp. B139–B152. https://doi.org/10.1137/18M1191816

Kavanagh, D, Gallagher, MT & Kalia, N 2019, 'Tify: a quality-based frame selection tool for improving the output of unstable biomedical imaging', PLoS ONE, vol. 14, no. 3, e0213162. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0213162

Conference contribution

Cupples, G, Gallagher, MT, Smith, D & Kirkman-Brown, J 2021, Heads and tails: requirements for informative and robust computational measures of sperm motility. in L Björndahl, J Flanagan, R Holmberg & U Kvist (eds), XIIIth International Symposium on Spermatology. Springer, Cham, pp. 135-150. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66292-9_21

Review article

Baldi, E, Gallagher, MT, Krasnyak, S, Kirkman-Brown, J & Editorial Board members of the World Health Organization laboratory manual for the examination and processing of human semen 2022, 'Extended semen examinations in the sixth edition of the WHO Laboratory Manual for the Examination and Processing of Human Semen: contributing to the understanding of the function of the male reproductive system', Fertility and Sterility, vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 252-257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fertnstert.2021.11.034

Gallagher, MT, Smith, D & Kirkman-Brown, J 2018, 'CASA: tracking the past and plotting the future', Reproduction Fertility and Development, vol. 30, no. 6, pp. 867-874. https://doi.org/10.1071/RD17420

View all publications in research portal