Getting on your Nerves!

The human body is incredibly complicated, however, mathematics is increasingly being used to guide new developments. The current fashion is to use big data sets and AI, but this isn’t the only tool maths has at its disposal. I’m going to speak about a class of mathematical models that take inspiration from fire engines and electric circuits to describe the cardiovascular system, and explain the connections between these models and my research on peripheral nerves.

Peripheral nerve damage afflicts 1 M people p.a. in Europe and the USA. In the most severe cases, patients experience major loss of function as a consequence of a peripheral nerve being severed.The gold-standard treatment for patients, grafting, however is lacking, with only 50% of patients experience functional recovery. New approaches are under development, however the sheer number of options available in terms of material and cell combinations hinder the speed of developing new conduit designs. My research which aims to overcome these challenges via the use of computational modelling.