Profile

I live in Dundee which is a small city on the east coast of Scotland, where I have lived since 2011. I live by myself, which I really enjoy as I get lots of peace and quiet.

When I am not working I like to do outdoorsy things like hillwalking, kayaking and sailing. I also have quite a big family so like to spend time with them whenever possible. When it is raining or too cold to be outside (which is most of the time in Scotland), I enjoy playing piano and watching films.

I don’t get that much free time though as I do quite a bit of volunteering at my church and with a youth organisation, the Girls’ Brigade (GB). This involves playing games, teaching crafts and having fun with girls, primary and high school aged, one night a week. I also am part of a few local and national groups with this organisation, so help organise events for the girls involved all over Scotland. This year I am even organising a big STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) competition. Through GB I get to attend international events in nice places like Australia, Kenya and Zambia!

I use maths to investigate biological problems. Mainly I work on probability based models of biological cells. Using my computer I develop simulations that let the cells move around and interact with each other. We can apply this to lots of different biological situations, some of the ones I work on are:

– How immune cells interact with cancer cells

– How cells interact with different chemicals to make patterns

– How cancer cells interact with each other to grow

– How immune cells move around the body

These models can then be used to investigate and answer different questions, for example:

– How can we make the immune system stronger against cancer?

– How do animals get their stripes/spots (tigers, leopards, giraffes)?

– How does cancer grow and invade in the body?

The results can then be used to give us ideas on how to treat cancer and a better understanding of different biological processes.

Example of model where immune cells (red/green) can interact with tumour cells (blue). In this case the tumour has been able to grow quite large,

Example of cells interacting with chemicals to form patterns. Initially each position in the square had the same number of cells, at the end cells move towards each other to form circular groups.

Example of model where cancer cells (green/yellow) invade healthy tissue (blue) 

I am not sure if I ever have a typical day! I usually come into the office for around 8.30am, check emails and write out a list of what I want to try and do that day. Then I get on to the main parts of my work, which is working on different projects. Usually I go home around 5pm.

For each project I may be doing something a little different each day. From the start of a new project to the end of it there are lots of steps:

1. Come up with an idea for a project. This involves reading up on biological problems, and work that other mathematicians have done already.

2. Start thinking about how we can use maths to solve our problem. For me this usually involves starting to write up code (algorithms) that can describe our biological problem.

3. I then check that my code does what I want it to, and also is as realistic as possible biologically. This involves choosing parameter values, for example we need to tell the computer how fast a cell will move. We can get this information from biological experiments to make our model more realistic.

4. Once I have code then I can start running different simulations, to test different biological situations. For example, if we want to know what is the difference if the cancer cells can grow really quickly compared to if they grow very slowly. To do this we would run one set of simulations with a slow growing tumour and one set with a fast growing tumour and compare the results.

5. After all the simulations are done (this can take anywhere from 10 mins to a few months!) we can then start comparing the results. We then check our results make sense and whether they tell us anything useful about the biological problem.

6. Once we have all our results and know what they mean we can write up our work. Once written up we send it off to different journals to be published, so that other people can read it.

7. Once we have finished a project, we might think about how we can take it further and develop it to answer even more biological problems.

These steps are just a rough outline of what is involved in each project, and can take several months or even years to complete.