Systems Modelling and Quantitative Biomedicine

Members of the Centre pursue a ‘systems approach’ to basic biomedical research and its translation. Our emphasis is on techniques from mathematical and statistical modelling, theoretical physics, machine learning and data science, and biophysical imaging and image analysis. Crucially, this is informed and co-created with a range of stakeholders, including biomedical researchers, clinical scientists, members of the public and industry partners.

We believe placing the research challenge at the core and bringing together expertise from complementary disciplines will be increasingly essential for driving fundamental research discoveries in the biomedical domain and enabling their translation into societal benefit. At present we focus on research challenges in our 4 research themes of Mathematical and computational modelling in biomedical & clinical systems, Neuroscience & neurology, Endocrinology, metabolism & reproduction and Medical sensors and wearable technology.

Seed funding for research and the Research Incubator

Our flagship research incubator is inspired by business equivalents but repurposed for the specific needs of co-designing and co-creating research projects at the interface between quantitative disciplines and biomedical and clinical research. The incubator is a six-month focussed period of research where investigators from complementary disciplines, as well as other stakeholders from industry and the clinic, are paired with one or more of our Centre Fellows. Centre Fellows provide the critical expertise needed to take the project from concept to delivery and by the end of six months teams will have produced results suitable for both first publications and onward funding.

Projects are selected on merit by our steering group, as well as assessed for suitability by our Centre Fellows. Those teams invited to join the incubator will first attend a two-day retreat which features dedicated sessions built around research planning, IP and impact, public involvement and engagement and research finance. Teams are awarded a budget of up to £10K to cover essential costs, as well as a proportion of time of at least one centre research fellow. The budget for spend is approved at the end of the retreat, enabling these pump priming projects to commence immediately thereafter. By the end of the incubator, teams will have preliminary results suitable for both publication and application for onward funding.

Find out more about the seed corn projects

N-CODE

N-CODE is an EPSRC funded network plus focused on the development of technologies that shift the emphasis of diagnosis and management of neurological, neuropsychiatric or neurodevelopmental conditions from hospital environments to the community. Find out more about the network here or sign-up to become a partner here.

• Professor John Terry
• Dr Wessel Woldman
• Dr Eder Zavala
• Dr Leandro Junges
• Dr Meurig Gallagher
• Dr Daniel Galvis
• Dr Isabella Marinelli
• Professor Manfred Opper
• Professor Viktor Jirsa
• Professor Dave Smith 
• Dr Anirban Dutta 
• Dr Atif Shahzad
• Dr Catherine Drysdale
• Dr Yingjing Feng 
• Dr Jake Ahern 
• Gwen Harrington 
• Peter Kissack 
• Belinda Lombard 
• David Bagshaw
• Dr Louis Gall
• Yueyue Zhang

Dynamic responses of the adrenal steroidogenic regulatory network. Spiga F, Zavala E, Walker JJ, Zhao Z, Terry JR, Lightman SL. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 Aug 1;114(31):E6466-E6474.

An optimal strategy for epilepsy surgery: Disruption of the rich-club? Lopes MA, Richardson MP, Abela E, Rummel C, Schindler K, Goodfellow M, Terry JR PLoS Comput Biol. 2017 Aug 17;13(8):e1005637.

Background EEG Connectivity Captures the Time-Course of Epileptogenesis in a Mouse Model of Epilepsy. Słowiński P, Sheybani L, Michel CM, Richardson MP, Quairiaux C, Terry JR*, Goodfellow M*. eNeuro. 2019 6(4):1-13. pii: ENEURO.0059-19.2019.

Revealing epilepsy type using a computational analysis of interictal EEG. Lopes MA, Perani S, Yaakub SN, Richardson MP, Goodfellow M, Terry JR. Sci Rep. 2019 Jul 15;9(1):10169.

Convolutional neural networks for reconstruction of undersampled optical projection tomography data applied to in vivo imaging of zebrafish. Davis SPX, Kumar S, Alexandrov Y, Bhargava A, da Silva Xavier G, Rutter GA, Frankel P, Sahai E, Flaxman S, French PMW, McGinty J. J Biophotonics. 2019 Aug 6:e201900128. doi: 10.1002/jbio.201900128. [Epub ahead of print]

The role that choice of model plays in predictions for epilepsy surgery. Junges L, Lopes MA, Terry JR*, Goodfellow M*. Sci Rep. 2019 May 14;9(1):7351.

Evolving dynamic networks: An underlying mechanism of drug resistance in epilepsy? Woldman W, Cook MJ, Terry JR. Epilepsy Behav. 2019 May;94:264-268.

A bioinformatics workflow to decipher transcriptomic data from vitamin D studies. Muñoz García A, Eijssen LM, Kutmon M, Sarathy C, Cengo A, Hewison M, Evelo CT, Lenz M, Coort SL. J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol. 2019 May;189:28-35.

The Role of Excitability and Network Structure in the Emergence of Focal and Generalized Seizures, Lopes M, Junges L, Woldman W, Goodfellow M and Terry J Front. Neurol., 11 February 2020

Statistical testing approach for fractional anomalous diffusion classification. Weron A, Janczura J, Boryczka E, Sungkaworn T, Calebiro D. Phys Rev E. 2019 Apr;99(4-1):042149. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.99.042149.

(*) = joint senior author