Math Tools for Life

Jimena Davis

(page 3 of 3)

“I had to hit the biochemistry textbooks to get a handle on this project.  But I wanted to step outside the box of what I’d been doing at NC State and do something totally different,” she says.

Some results obtained from the inverse problem for the estimation of the growth rate distribution. Click image for larger version and more information

While the specifics were completely new, Davis saw that the essence of the problem was her specialty: an inverse problem — the mathematical modeling of biological systems in which there’s a significant amount of data uncertainty.

As a first contribution, Davis reduced the level of unknown factors in the model by using a reformulation technique developed at the Lab to input known chemical reaction rates, derived from an on-line database.

Davis then coupled the reformulated model with DAKOTA, a computational optimization toolkit also developed at Sandia.

Initial desktop tests of the revised model show it’s effective in parameter estimation using simulated data.

“The E. coli work was completely new to her, but in three short months she was able to significantly contribute to our work,” May says.  “Using DAKOTA and empirical data, she examined various computational approaches for the estimation of multiple-rate parameters for the E. coli central metabolic system.  The results demonstrate the feasibility of this approach in determining reliable model parameters for systems biology applications.”

Now completing her thesis at NC State, Davis hopes to move from fish and bacteria to humans.

“I want to work on problems such as HIV-AIDS or cancer research that will really be beneficial to people — that will make a difference in people’s lives,” she says.

And while she’s helping shape the big picture in computational biology, she also wants to go back to high schools to talk about how math can directly shape lives.

“I want to mentor young female students,” Davis says.  “To tell them ‘Yes, you can major in math.  Yes, you can be a mathematical scientist.’ ”

 

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