Big Names in Medical Mathematics?

[DeadCactus]

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Anyone happen to know some researchers or institutions that are well known for work involving the use of mathematical modelling and analysis to look at medical questions? The scale (i.e. pathological changes at the disease level or the impact of a new treatment on a national level) doesn't really matter. Just looking for people and institutions doing mathematically intense work...

 

[tortuga87]

Some schools that come to my mind:

NYU, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences

Harvard-MIT

Stanford

UCLA-Caltech

USC-Caltech

Baylor, Rice Bioengineering track

 

[DeadCactus]

I just wanted to add that the schools don't necessarily have to offer an MD-PhD.

 

[Xcited392]

Does the field of biostatistics not fit your criteria?

 

[DeadCactus]

I'd gladly accept biostatistics suggestions, but the main focus was to try and find some people doing things in the realm of analysis, partial differential equations, etc. It's strangely difficult to find mathematicians working on medical problems...

 

[dl2dp2]

I'd gladly accept biostatistics suggestions, but the main focus was to try and find some people doing things in the realm of analysis, partial differential equations, etc. It's strangely difficult to find mathematicians working on medical problems...

it's not strange if you consider that in mathematics community, pure analysis is considered superior to applied analysis. A harmonic analysis specialist or someone who does analytic geometry is going to have an easier time to find a position in a math department. PDE specialists are considered too applied and are not usually part of the math faculty (with notably exceptions, such as at the Courant).

Using mathematics in biology/medicine isn't in itself a self-contained subject matter, and that's why you are having difficulty trying to find them in math departments. A variety of theoreticians are in different disciplines, and you have to determine what you are interested first. Is it genomics? Is it neuroscience? Is it molecular biology/signaling/protein interactions? Is it population genetics/epidemiology? There are well known figures in each of these areas, all of which use sophisticated mathematics, but you can't approach all of these questions simultaneously.

Another field to consider is machine learning and pattern recognition, which is an independent field in itself, and the techniques developed within it are being applied to a variety of subjects in medicine. Perhaps you are more interested in developing techniques?

You have to realize that mathematics is ALWAYS only a means to an end in biology and medicine. You ALWAYS have to work within a context and your goals may be unrealistic.

 

[JDWflash44]

Anyone happen to know some researchers or institutions that are well known for work involving the use of mathematical modelling and analysis to look at medical questions? The scale (i.e. pathological changes at the disease level or the impact of a new treatment on a national level) doesn't really matter. Just looking for people and institutions doing mathematically intense work...

Cant get more mathematically intense than Dr Eugene Blackstone in the Cardiology/CT Surgery Department at the Cleveland Clinic. He loves working with med students as well.

http://my.clevelandclinic.org/staff_directory/staff_display.aspx?doctorid=2546

 

[Lil Mick]

Ohio State coordinates the Mathematical Biosciences Institue. At their website, you can find mathematicians/biologists working on specific problems in mathematical biology. It is a relatively new field, and no one really knows what "mathematical medicine" encompasses.

If you're looking for schools with MD/PhD programs in mathematics/biostatistics, MUSC, U Minnesota, U Chicago, UIC (U of I campus), U Florida, U Miami (possibly soon), Harvard, and Stanford have options amenable to applied mathematics. Ohio State also has a biomedical engineering MD/PhD program that allows students to take quite a bit of applied mathematics courses...

 

[INTJish]

If you're interested in mathematical modeling, look into Trachette Jackson at the University of Michigan.

 

[erikreinertsen]

Edited: PI's research interests have changed haha

 

[ellia08]

I'm not as up on this as I used to be but I can throw out some info.

It depends on exactly what you mean by mathematics. On the most applied end are the statisical geneticists and on the most theoretical end is mathematical biology. + about a trillion things in between including stuff like biomedical optics and image processing.

Statistical Genetics: Theres the big 3, from east to west: Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (Eric Lander and team), University of Michigan (see Mike Mike Boehnke and Goncalo abecasis + the Thousand Genomes project) and University of Washington (Debbie Nickerson + colleagues). See also Russ Altman at Stanford, Kenneth Lange at ucla, Neil Risch at ucsf, Aravinda Chakravarti at hopkins,

Mathematical Biology: The Arizona State program is killer. Trachette Jackson at Michigan. University of Washington has some great people. I love the arrythmia modeling work at hopkins and ucla (see James Weiss and Alan Garfinkel... do not confuse this James Weiss with Bob Weiss the inflammatory guy from Iowa.) and michigan just invested in a huge arrythmia modeling group.

Biomedical Optics: U of Rochester + Wellman Center of Photomedicine

Network theory (genes, gene-rna, gene-RNA-protein, etc): LOTS of people here and I'm not up enough to go through them. One stand out is Eric Schadt who actually worked for Merck (yes, the drug company!), then rosetta, then Pacific biosciences.

Bioinformatics: Vanderbilt for sure. Isaac Kohane in boston. Could bulk this up more but those are the first that pop to mind.

.... lets see what else is there...

I have no idea about image processing. Aside from the Laser stuff, I find it deadly boring and dont read it. And OH MAN, systems biology. There is just no way to even summarize all that stuff. I'll leave that to the next poster. 🙂


That it for a quick review. I'm SURE that I've left out a TON. No one get offended. I'm years out of the game AND post-call ... but those are on the top of my head.

 

[ellia08]

lol, so I just read the WHOLE thread and realized that most of these are useless to you!

Yeah, aside from Trachette and the arrythmia modelers I dont have any solid names for you on the diffEQ front. Its just been too long. (but if you're still an undergrad you should check out the Los Alamos REU for biomathematics. I think that ones still around. Its nifty, you'll learn a lot, and its a great summer job.)

A lot of the same skills you might use in the systems or network stuff. But the optics work and the statistical genetics stuff would be totally foreign to you. (Cool but really different.)

 

[JHopRevisit]

In my opinion, the answer to the OP's question really depends on where you want to sit on the applied/theoretical spectrum.

If you're interested in applied work, where your focus will be describing empirical results through the use of already developed models, almost any biomedical engineering or bioinformatics department nationally will have plenty of opportunities. As long as this type of work meets your threshold, I completely disagree that there are "few" people working in mathematical biology. Popular areas include systems biology (usually at the level of transcriptional regulation and signaling networks), genomics and bioinformatics, epidemiology and population level work, etc. This kind of stuff is not at all rare.

If you're interested in pure mathematical theory, where your major contributions will be without experimental support, usually that type of development comes from other fields. Biologists borrow mathematical ideas, our bottlenecks are usually empirical rather than having sufficient mathematical "ammunition" to describe a given problem.