NJIT in the News

Avi Maayan, an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, will discuss "Data Mining and Network Analysis in Systems Biology" on Sept. 29 at 4 p.m. in Cullimore Hall, Room 611.  

NJIT will host on June 1-2, 2009 Frontiers in Applied and Computational Mathematics (FACM '09), the sixth in a series of annual conferences organized by the NJIT's Department of Mathematical Sciences and the Center for Applied Mathematics and Statistics. This year's conference will focus on mathematical biology with sessions in neuroscience, ecology, biophysics, and biostatistics. For a list of plenary and invited speakers, click here. 

Peter Thomas, PhD, a professor in the department of mathematics at Case Western State University, will discuss "Stochastic Phenomena in Chemotaxis" at the Mathematical Biology Seminar Series on April 28 at 4 p.m. in Cullimore Hall, Room 611.

Viji Santhakumar, PhD, of the Department of Neurology and Neurosciences at UMDNJ will discuss "Topological Determinants of Epileptogenesis" at the Spring 2009 Mathematical Biology Seminar Series on April 7 at 4 p.m. in Cullimore Hall, Room 611.

Mark Alber, PhD, professor in the Departments of Mathematics and Physics and the Center for the Study of Biocomplexity at the University of Notre Dame, will discuss the "Connection Between Discrete Stochastic and Continuous Models in Biology" at the Spring 2009 Applied Mathematics Colloquium Series on April 3 at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall 2.

Asohan Amarasingham, PhD, of the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University, will discuss "Nonparametrics for Spike Train Analysis" on March 31 at 4 p.m. in Cullimore Hall, Room 611. The lecture is part of the Spring 2009 Mathematical Biology Seminar Series.

Alfonso Renart of the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University will discuss "The Asynchronous State in the Cerebral Cortex" at a Mathematical Biology Seminar on March 10 at 4 p.m. in Cullimore Hall Room 611.

Scientists believe that complex diseases such as schizophrenia, major depression and cancer are not caused by one, but a multitude of dysfunctional genes. A novel computational biology method developed by a research team led by Ali Abdi, PhD, associate professor in NJIT’s department of electrical and computer engineering, has found a way to uncover the critical genes responsible for disease development.

Horacio G. Rotstein, PhD, assistant professor in the department of mathematical sciences at NJIT, will discuss "The Mechanism of Abrupt Transition from Normal to Epileptic Spiking Activity in Medial Entorhinal Cortex Layer II Stellate Cells" at the Mathematical Biology Seminar Series on Oct. 28 at 4 p.m. in Cullimore Hall Room 611.

Dan Bunker, PhD, an assistant professor in NJIT's Federated Department of Biological Sciences, will discuss "Quantifying Species Functional Diversity with Convex Hull Volume" on October 14 at 4 p.m. in Cullimore Hall Room 611. The lecture is part of the Fall 2008 Mathematical Biology Seminar Series.

New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) will host May 19-21, 2008, more than 200 leading experts for the fifth annual Frontiers in Applied and Computational Mathematics Conference, an unusual three-day event featuring leading researchers who will discuss the latest news and research findings in their fields.

"Frontiers in Applied and Computational Mathematics," the fifth in a series of annual conferences organized by NJIT's Department of Mathematical Sciences and the Center for Applied Mathematics and Statistics, will be held on May 19-21 at NJIT. This year's conference will focus on mathematical biology (including mathematical neuroscience, developmental biology, and ecology), mathematical fluid dynamics, applied statistics and biostatistics, electromagnetics/waves, and acoustics.

Filippo Posta, a doctoral student in the department of mathematical sciences at NJIT, will discuss “Signal Transmission in Epithelial Layers” at the Mathematical Biology Seminar Series on April 22 at 4 p.m. in Cullimore Hall, Room 611.

Daniel Bunker, a post-doctoral research scientist in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia University, will discuss "Global Change, Community Composition, and Ecosystem Functioning" at the Spring 2008 Mathematical Biology Seminar Series on April 3 at 1 p.m. in Cullimore Hall 611.

"Investigating How Feedback to a Descending Projection Neuron Influences Rhythmic Pattern Generation in the Target Network: A Modeling" is the topic of a Mathematical Biology Seminar by Nickolas Kintos of the Department of Mathematics at Fordham University. The seminar will be held on March 25 at 4 p.m. in Cullimore Hall, Room 611. 

Odelia Schwartz, PhD, an assistant professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, will discuss "Natural Image Statistics and Contextual Visual Processing" at the Mathematical Biology Seminar Series on Feb. 5 at 4 p.m. in Cullimore Hall, Rm. 611. 

NJIT will host “Frontiers in Applied and Computational Mathematics,” the fourth in a series of annual conferences that will explore recent advances in mathematical biology, mathematical fluid dynamics, biostatistics, electromagnetics/waves, and acoustics, on May 14-16.

The Biology Society at NJIT sponsored a trip to the 22nd Annual Clean Ocean Action Beach Sweep on April 28 in Sandy Hook, NJ. They joined an estimated 700 volunteers in Sandy Hook and 3,000 volunteers statewide who removed tons of debris and recorded their collections for later use in identifying pollution trends.

Laxmi Parida, PhD, research staff member in the Computational Biology Center at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, will discuss "Permutations in Bioinformatics" at a Computer Science Seminar on April 30 at 2:30 p.m., Guttenberg Information Technologies Center, Room 4415.

Yixin Guo, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of mathematics at Drexel University, will discuss "Thalamicortical Relay Reliability Across STN Deep Brain Stimulation in Computation Models" at a Mathematical Biology seminar on April 17 at 4 p.m., Cullimore Hall Rm. 611.

Camelia Prodan, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of physics at NJIT, will discuss “Measuring Membrane Potential of Live Cells by Dielectric Spectroscopy” on March 27 at 4 p.m., Cullimore Hall, Room 611.

Brenda Farrell, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of otolaryngology at Baylor College of Medicine, will discuss "Membrane Tether Forces in Mast Cells" at a Mathematical Biology Seminar on Feb. 27 at 1 p.m., Life Sciences Building, 1st floor, Rutgers-Newark.

Jasneet Kaur, a senior at NJIT, is conducting research sponsored by a program in the department of mathematical sciences that could one day help scientists understand how cancer spreads. Kaur, a graduate of Fair Lawn High School, studies how a protein-- RhoA--changes the shape of cells.

Janeet Kaur (at left) is one of six students in NJIT's Undergraduate Biology and Math Training Program (UBMTP) who will present their research at a Mathematical Biology Seminar on Dec. 13 at 4 p.m., Cullimore Hall, Rm. 611.

Tim Vogels of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons will discuss "Signal Gating and Detailed Balance in Networks of Model Neurons" on Nov. 7 at 4 p.m., Cullimore Lecture Hall Rm. 611.

"Multi-Strain Disease Models with Antibody-Dependent Enhancement" is the topic of a seminar by Lora Billings, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of mathematical Sciences at Montclair State University, on Oct. 24 at 4 p.m., Cullimore Hall Rm. 611.

Carol Venanzi, PhD, a distinguished professor in the department of chemistry and environmental science at NJIT, will discuss “Mathematical Modeling of Drugs To Treat Cocaine Abuse” on April 25 at 4 p.m., Cullimore Hall, Room  611.

Sure they taste great boiled and properly seasoned, but crabs may also hold the key to some of biology's most intriguing questions about rhythmic patterns in the central nervous system and what happens when those patterns become abnormal. Research into rhythmic neuron-firing patterns that activate muscles in the stomachs of crabs is one of about a dozen studies under way at NJIT's interdisciplinary Center for Applied Mathematics and Statistics that combine mathematical and biological techniques to determine how physiological systems function. A crab's simple digestive system, says Farzan Nadim, associate professor of mathematical sciences, makes the crustacean an ideal research model. "Because a crab has only about 30 neurons involved in digestion, it is a good choice for studying the rhythmic pattern of fast and slow nerve impulses that activate the stomach muscles during grinding, chewing, digesting and filtering food," says Nadim. The researcher and his colleague, associate profesor Amitabha Bose, use computational, analytical and experimental techniques to study the crabs. Nadim's research is funded by a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and both researchers also have grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). "Through the work of mathematicians over the past 20 years, we now have general principles that show us that rhythmic patterns in most animals--including humans--are essentially the same," Bose points out. "Scientists have established that most species can perform several rhythmic motor activities simultaneously, such as walking, breathing, swimming and chewing. What we don't know yet is how these rhythmic activities are generated by neurons and why nerve cells sometimes begin to misfire and disrupt the normal oscillating fast-slow rhythmic pattern. Malfunctioning of these neuron-firing patterns leads to such abnormalities as epilepsy and Parkinson's disease. Jorge Golowasch, an associate professor of mathematical sciences, also collaborates with Nadim in researching neural networks in crustaceans' stomachs. Using electrophysical and computational methods, Golowasch studies cellular and network mechanisms that enable neurons to recover from disruptions produced by growth and injury. With the help of NIH and NSF support, he is attempting to answer the question of how the nervous system can be flexible, or plastic, while at the same time remaining stable, which may shed light on mechanisms of learning and memory. Expanding the spectrum of studies Nadim, Bose and Golowasch are among the members of the Department of Mathematical Sciences and the Center for Applied Mathematics and Statistics who are pursing studies in mathematical biology, a field of applied mathematics that has been growing steadily in recent years. One of the largest concentrations of researchers working in mathematical biology in North America is to be found at NJIT, an their efforts have been supported by major external funding. To date, the funding that has been awarded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Whitaker Foundation, and other public and private sources amounts to nearly $2.5 million. Research in mathematical biology spans a growing range of applications, including studies in animal and plant populations, physiology, biomechanics, epidemiology, disease pathology, neuroscience, hemodynamics, molecular biology, pharmacokinetics and cell physiology. Some examples of medical applications include the detailed study of the components of the brain, treatment of diseases, and the design of pharmaceutical devices for drug delivery. In mathematical biology, equations and experiments go hand in hand. Accordingly, most mathematical biology studies are conducted by teams of researchers that include mathematicians who use analytical and computational models to propose a hypothesis and experimentalists who carry out the relevant experiments in their laboratories to test them. Some of the NJIT researchers are working independently while others are collaborating with experimentalists at Boston University, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Michigan, New York University, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. A model approach at NJIT The expertise in mathematical biology marshaled at NJIT was one of the reasons Robert M. Miura, associate chair of the department of mathematical sciences and professor in mathematical sciences and biomedical engineering, decided to join the faculty two years ago after having been at the University of British Columbia for over two decades. Miura is involved in a number of neuroscience and related studies, including looking at why neurons fire at specific frequencies, how large-amplitude ion waves propagate in the brain after injury, how normal beta cells in the pancreas work electrically, and how malfunctioning beta cells can lead to diabetes. "Interestingly, the types of mathematical equations that govern electrical activity in pancreatic beta cells also govern the electrical activities in other cells such as neurons and heart cells," explains Miura. "This is one of the beauties of mathematical modeling. Many of the mathematical ideas gleaned from one model of a biological system can be applied to models of many other systems." The microcirculatory system, comprising tiny capillaries and arteries that can't be seen without a microscope, is the focus of Daniel Goldman's Whitaker Foundation-funded research. An assistant professor of mathematical sciences and biomedical engineering, Goldman is using mathematical and computational models to study blood flow and mass transport in the microcirculatory system during sepsis, a potentially fatal condition caused by an infection. Sepsis can cause the body's major organs--the heart, kidneys, liver and lungs--to fail, resulting in death. "We know that sepsis changes the flow patterns of the blood, which can lead to a lack of oxygen in organs," says Goldman. "But lack of oxygen is not the only cause of organ failure. With our studies we hope to have a better understanding of what other factors lead to sepsis." This multidisciplinary perspective is affirmed by Daljit S. Ahluwalia, chair of the Department of Mathematical Sciences and director of the Center for Applied Mathematics and Statistics. "Before we can hope to cure a disease, we have to understand the underlying mechanisms, and that requires several disciplines," he says. "The 21st century has been called the century of biology, and here at NJIT we are applying our wide-ranging expertise, which includes mathematics, to the many unanswered questions about how physiological systems work."