David Rand

Warwick Mathematics Institute and Zeeman Institute

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Contact

Phone:
44(0)24 7652 8321
email: d.a.rand(at)warwick.ac.uk
web:www.davidrand.uk


Address:
Mathematical Sciences Building
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
United Kingdom

David Rand is Professor of Mathematics and a member of Warwick's Zeeman Institute for Systems Biology and Infectious Disease Epidemiology (SBIDER). Until August 2005 he was Chair of Warwick's Mathematics Institute, from 2005 to 2010 he held an EPSRC Senior Research Fellowship and from 2005 to 2016 he directed the Warwick Systems Biology Centre (WSB).

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Currently, his main research interest is Systems Biology, particularly understanding the design and operating principles of regulatory, signalling and developmental systems and developing new mathematical and statistical tools and approaches in order to do this. He also still publishes in Dynamical Systems.

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News…….

New papers

Three new papers on developmental biology: On using dynamical systems and approximate Bayesian computation to validate two new landscape dynamic archetypes underlying early cell differentiation in the vertebrate neural tube (Cell Systems 12:1–17 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2021.08.013). On formulating and fitting landscape models to quantitative data to model the well-studied process of vulval development in the C. elegans worm (PLoS computational biology, 17(6), p.e1009034). On enumerating all 3-way cellular decisions realisable by tuning at most two morphogens (parameters) and the utility of Morse-Smale systems and catastrophe theory in understanding Waddington landscapes (PNAS 118:38:e2109729118 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2109729118).

Circadian clock & cancer. New paper on an algorithm to determine the state of an individual's circadian clock from a single tissue sample and using this to demonstrate a link between good clock functionality and survival in a breast cancer trial. See here.

On information and signalling. New paper on how signalling systems can use multiplexing to send multidimensional information to genes so as to allow effective complex decision-making. Details here. On how temperature regulates NF-κB dynamics and function through timing of A20 transcription. Details here.

Recent. On new analytical approximation and faster simulation of large complex stochastic models. Available here. On heterogeneous NF-kB dynamics. Details here. Reviewing Systems Chronotherapeutics. Details here.

Two new grants from CRUK and EPSRC

CRUK & EPSRC: Improving Cancer Prognosis Through Circadian Time-Telling. With this grant which combines mathematical and experimental work we will study the connection between clock function in breast cancer tumours and survival. It is joint with Robert Dallmann and Barbel Finkenstadt, Sascha Ott and David Wild are co-investigors. Recent work of ours has suggested that there is a strong link between the quality of the circadian clock in tumour cells and survival of breast cancer patients. See the paper listed here.

EPSRC: Using catastrophes, dynamics & data analysis to uncover how differentiating cells make decisions. To provide a new approach to modelling of developmental systems that provides a characterised corpus of generic landscape motifs and new tools for data analysis of extensive multidimensional single cell data. We aim to use advanced analytical ideas (notably from singularity theory, dynamical systems and rare-event stochastic simulation) and the huge improvements in single cell data to overcome the shortfall in detailed biological knowledge and the challenges posed by the stochasticity and nonlinearity of the dynamics to provide a predictive theory that complements traditional modelling methods.

INSERM article

Article by INSERM on our paper about coupling between the mammalian circadian clock and the cell cycle.

EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training, MathSys 2

Our CDT, MathSys is one of the current batch of Centres for Doctoral Training funded by EPSRC, 13 external partners and the University of Warwick and 2019 marks the first year of the updated 5-year extension to it. Together with our partners from industry, academia, finance, life sciences, health and medicine, it is dedicated to tackling real-world problems that require the development of novel mathematics. These problems arise from our strong interaction with a range of external partners from industry, finance, biology and health, who represent some of the leading establishments in the UK. It is our belief that modern mathematics and statistics are a core building block for tackling many of the global challenges facing society and that there is a rapidly increasing demand for researchers with the mathematical skills needed. MathSys unites Warwick mathematicians in two research centres that have excellent records of world-leading research involving application of mathematics to real-world problems: the Zeeman Institute for Systems Biology and Infectious Disease Epidemiology (SBIDER) and the Centre for Complexity Science. MathSys website.

I will be interested in supervising projects in developmental biology, circadian clocks and cancer.

PhD studentship projects available

PhD studentship projects available on developmental biology, circadian clocks, cancer & chronotherapy, the NF-kappaB signalling system, information and cellular decision-making, development and mathematical aspects of systems biology. Interested students should email me.

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Book by Pinto, Rand and Ferreira now available from Springer:

A A. Pinto, D A. Rand and F Ferreira, Fine Structures of Hyperbolic Diffeomorphisms, Springer Monographs in Mathematics ISSN 1439-7382 (published October 22nd, 2008). Fine Structures web page here.

On surfaces the theory of the fine scale structure of hyperbolic invariant sets and their measures can be described in a very complete and elegant way. This is the subject of this book. A very substantial part of the exposition is the outcome of the ongoing research programme of Pinto & Rand that was started in the mid-90s. There are also a number of new developments in the book such as the pseudo-smooth structures for pseudo-Anosov systems.

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Dynamics, Games and Science I and II

Springer have recently published two books of papers based on talks given at the International Conference DYNA 2008, held in honor of Mauricio Peixoto and David Rand. Dynamics, Games & Science web page here.

Dynamics, Games and Science I and II are a selection of surveys and research articles written by leading researchers in mathematics. The majority of the contributions are on dynamical systems and game theory, focusing either on fundamental and theoretical developments or on applications to modeling in biology, economics, engineering, finances and psychology.

A new improved and updated SASSy, now called PeTTSy.

A new improved and updated version of the global perturbation theory analysis tools PeTTSy developed by Paul Brown, Mirela Domijan and David Rand is available. These enable one to calculate and display the sensitivity heat maps, IRCs and parameters sensitivity spectrum introduced recently by David Rand. They are particularly useful for model design and experimental optimisation. PeTTSy here. Also see the paper here about PeTTSy.

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© David Rand
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