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Research

CMB research
Funding Opportunities
Funded Awards
Research Output
News Stories

What We Do

We are an interdisciplinary team that focuses on development, analysis, implementation, and validation of mathematical models describing biological systems. We strive to perfect the science of biological data and provide quantitative understanding of biological systems through cutting-edge interdisciplinary research, training, and community involvement. 

 

Seminar Series

VT-CMB faculty run a (mostly) weekly hybrid Math-Bio Seminar at Virginia Tech, where faculty, post docs and graduate students from Virginia Tech and other universities come to share their new and exciting research. Seminars are Wednesday afternoons 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM in McBryde 455.

Current Schedule & Past Speakers
CMB seminar series

Funding Opportunities

  • We will be awarding seed grants this semester to support interdisciplinary research collaborations throughout the university. Please find more information here. Proposals are due by January 17, 2025. 
  • We have an award for student and postdoc travel to support the research and professional development of math bio trainees. More information is here. Applications are due by December 15, 2024 for travel this semester.
  • We are supporting bringing speakers with research in math bio to the VT campus. More information is here. Requests are due by December 15, 2024 for visits this semester, with another round of funding expected in the spring.
  • Finally, we are happy to provide funds to support VT-CMB members’ open source publications in math bio. More information is here. These will be awarded on a rolling basis throughout the semester.

I’m looking forward to supporting mathematical biology at VT and building this community in the coming year. If you have any colleagues interested in becoming affiliated with the center, please feel free to share the application form here.

More Funding Opportunities

Funded Awards

Seed grants (Fall 2024)

  • Jing Chen/Sohan Kale/Avishek Mukherjee, “Hyperelastic and morphodynamic modeling of growing chain–mediated bacterial sliding”
  • Dana Hawley/Leah Johnson, “Does temperature alter the importance of environmental pathogen transmission?”
  • Noel Naughton/Zhenhua Tian, “Topology and geometry of octopus arms moving in 3D”

Trainee travel awards (Fall 2024)

  • Jeff Anderson, PhD student in Mechanical Engineering
  • Keoni Castellano, Postdoc in Mathematics
  • Megan Grey, PhD student in Mathematics
  • Pranav Khandelwal, Postdoc in Mechanical Engineering
  • Joshua Pulliam, PhD student in Mechanical Engineering
  • Yohan Sequeira, PhD student in Mechanical Engineering
  • Joshua R Taylor, PhD student in Mechanical Engineering

Research Output

  1. Murphy QM, Lewis GK, Sajadi MM, Forde JE, Ciupe SM. Understanding antibody magnitude and durability following vaccination against SARS-CoV-2. Mathematical Biosciences. 2024 Aug 30:109274.

  2. Heitzman-Breen N, Liyanage YR, Duggal N, Tuncer N, Ciupe SM. The effect of model structure and data availability on Usutu virus dynamics at three biological scales. Royal Society Open Science. 2024 Feb 7;11(2):231146.

  3. LeJeune L, Ghaffarzadegan N, Childs LM, Saucedo O. Mathematical analysis of simple behavioral epidemic models. Mathematical Biosciences. 2024 Sep 1;375:109250.

  4. Strube LF, Elgart S, Childs LM. Infection-induced increases to population size during cycles in a discrete-time epidemic model. Journal of Mathematical Biology. 2024 Jun;88(6):60.

  5. Porfiri M, De Lellis P, Aung E, Meneses S, Abaid N, Waters JS, Garnier S. Reverse social contagion as a mechanism for regulating mass behaviors in highly integrated social systems. PNAS nexus. 2024 Jun 28;3(7).

  6. Betts MM, Abaid N, Maurakis EG, Frimpong EA. Bluehead chub Nocomis leptocephalus hosts exploit selfish‐herd benefits from their heterospecific nest associates. Freshwater Biology. 2024 Mar;69(3):450-9.

  7. Murray SA, Holzbaur EL, Munson M, Cimini D, Lane TF, Alvania R, Applewhite DA, Chang F, Chen EH, Earnshaw WC, Evans CS. ASCB statement of commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Molecular Biology of the Cell. 2024 Aug 1;35(8):ed3.

  8. Jackson CM, McGuire JA, Losada ME, Maskery I, Ashcroft I, De Vita R, Dillard DA. Using cohesive zone models with digital image correlation to obtain a mixed mode I/II fracture envelope of a tough epoxy. Engineering Fracture Mechanics. 2024 Jan 23;295:109732.

  9. Gimenez C, Alperin M, De Vita R. The Effect of Menopause on Vaginal Tissue Mechanics: A Brief Review. Journal of Biomechanical Engineering. 2024 Jun 1;146(6).

  10. Keen NC, Chen J. Biological systems with a looped chain generate damped oscillations. Biophysical Journal. 2024 Feb 8;123(3):412a.

  11. Barth ZK, Hicklin I, Thézé J, Takatsuka J, Nakai M, Herniou EA, Brown AM, Aylward FO. Genomic analysis of hyperparasitic viruses associated with entomopoxviruses. Virus Evolution. 2024;10(1):veae051.

  12. Foster DJ, Dunnavant K, Shrader CW, LoPresti M, Seay S, Kharel Y, Brown AM, Huang T, Lynch KR, Santos WL. Discovery of Potent, Orally Bioavailable Sphingosine-1-Phosphate Transporter (Spns2) Inhibitors. Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. 2024 Jul 2;67(13):11273-95.

  13. Kraikivski P. A Mechanistic Model of Perceptual Binding Predicts That Binding Mechanism Is Robust against Noise. Entropy. 2024 Jan 31;26(2):133.

  14. Shu W, Kaplan CN, Barone JR. Dynamic, viscoelasticity-driven shape change of elastomer bilayers. ACS Applied Polymer Materials. 2024 Mar 1;6(6):3160-9.

Bradley, A. and Abaid, N. (2024) Combining Active and Passive Acoustic Sensing in Teams of Mobile Robots, In Proceedings of the 2024 Modeling, Estimation, and Control Conference, Paper TuBT2.2.

Physicists propose path to faster, more flexible robots

Date: May 17, 2024
Source: Virginia Tech
Summary: Physicists revealed a microscopic phenomenon that could greatly improve the performance of soft devices, such as agile flexible robots or microscopic capsules for drug delivery.

Read the Article

  1. NSF IHBEM: The fear of here: Integrating placebased travel behavior and detection into novel infectious disease models, September 2023-August 2026. PI Nick Ruktanonchai, Nicholas Kortessis, Robert Holt; Co-PIs: Song Gao, Shengjie Lai, Corrine Ruktanonchai, Omar Saucedo.

  2. NIH-NIGMS R35 GM149565: How mRNA features of cell cycle genes support proper cell division, 2023-2028. PI: Silke Hauf.

  3. NSF IHBEM Mathematical Formulations of Human Behavior Changein Epidemic Models, January 2023-December 2026. PI: Navid Ghaffarzadegan; Co-PIs: Lauren Childs, Mohammad S Jalali, Ran Xu.

  4. NIH NIGMS: Identifiability investigation of Multi-scale Models of Infectious Diseases, September 2023- August 2026, 2023-2026. PI Stanca Ciupe; Co-PIs Necibe Tuncer, Nisha Duggal.

  5. NIH – F31: Understanding how variations in nuclear size after whole genome doubling affect tumorigenesis, Apr 2023 – Apr 2025. PI: Daniela Cimini. 

  6. NSF: The Role of Stress in Human Crowd Dynamics during Emergency Situations, 2023-2026. PIs: Nicole Abaid, PIs Jennifer MacCormack, Sachit Butail.

  1. Anne Brown was awarded the 2024 Virginia Tech Department of Biochemistry Outstanding Research Award.

  2. Stanca Ciupe awarded the Roger H. Moore and Mojdeh Khatam-Moore Faculty Fellow 2024-2027.

  1. Michael Robert co-organized Queer in Applied Mathematics at ICERN.

  2. Lauren Childs co-organized the workshop `Dynamics in Malaria transmission’ at Brin Mathematics Research Institute, November 2023.

  3. Stanca Ciupe, Michael Robert and Kyle Dahlin participated at the Society for Mathematical Biology Annual Meeting, July 2024, Seoul, South Korea.

  1. Congratulations to Dr. Yirui Chen (Chen lab) for defending her PhD.

  2. Congratulations to Dr. Nora Heitzman-Breen (Ciupe lab) for defending her PhD.

  3. Congratulations to Anayse Miller (Childs lab) for defending her MS.

  4. Congratulations to Nicolas Puglisi (Saucedo lab) for defending his MS.

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