Abstract: The study of sleep and circadian rhythms at scale requires novel technologies and approaches that are valid, cost effective and do not pose much of a burden to the participant. Here we will present our recent studies in which we have evaluated several classes of technologies and approaches including wearables, nearables, blood based biomarkers and combinations of data with mathematical models.

Abstract: There has been an increased use of scoring systems in clinical settings for the purpose of assessing risks in a convenient manner that provides important evidence for decision making. Machine learning-based methods may be useful for identifying important predictors and building models; however, their ‘black box’ nature limits their interpretability as well as clinical acceptability. This talk aims to introduce and demonstrate how interpretable machine learning can be used to create scoring systems for clinical decision making.

Abstravt: Latent space dynamics identification (LaSDI) is an interpretable data-driven framework that follows three distinct steps, i.e., compression, dynamics identification, and prediction. Compression allows high-dimensional data to be reduced so that they can be easily fit into an interpretable model. Dynamics identification lets you derive the interpretable model, usually some form of parameterized differential equations that fit the reduced latent space data. Then, in the prediction phase, the identified differential equations are solved in the reduced space for a new parameter point and its solution is projected back to the full space. The efficiency of the LaSDI framework comes from the fact that the solution process in the prediction phase does not involve any full order model size. For the identification, various approaches are possible, e.g., a fixed form as in dynamic mode decomposition and thermodynamics-based LaSDI, a regression form as in sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics (SINDy) and weak SINDy, and a physics-driven form as projection-based reduced order model. Various physics prob- lems were accurately accelerated by the family of LaSDIs, achieving a speed-up of 1000x, e.g., kinetic plasma simulations, pore collapse, and computational fluid problems.

Abstract:  The effect of malaria on the developing world is devastating. Each year there are more than 200 million cases and over 400,000 deaths, with children under the age of five the most vulnerable. Ambitious malaria elimination targets have been set by the World Health Organization for 2030. These involve the elimination of the disease in at least 35 countries. However, these malaria elimination targets rest precariously on being able to treat the disease appropriately; a difficult feat with the emergence and spread of antimalarial drug resistance, along with many other challenges. In this talk, I will introduce several statistical and mathematical models that can be used to monitor malaria transmission and to support malaria elimination. For example, I’ll present mechanistic models of disease transmission, statistical models that allow the emergence and spread of antimalarial drug resistance to be monitored, mechanistic models that capture the role of bioclimatic factors on the risk of malaria and optimal geospatial sampling schemes for future malaria surveillance. I will discuss how the results of these models have been used to inform public health policy and support ongoing malaria elimination efforts.

Abstract: Malignant gliomas are highly invasive brain tumors. Recent attention has focused on their capacity for network-driven invasion, whereby mitotic events can be followed by the migration of nuclei along long thin cellular protrusions, termed tumour microtubes (TM). Here I develop a mathematical model that describes this microtube-driven invasion of gliomas. I show that scaling limits lead to well known glioma models as special cases such as go-or-grow models, the PI model of Swanson, and the anisotropic model of Swan. I compute the invasion speed and I use the model to fit experiments of cancer resection and regrowth in the mouse brain.
(Joint work with N. Loy, K.J. Painter, R. Thiessen, A. Shyntar).

Abstract: TBA