Inaugural Lecture - Professor Rachel Bearon 12th June 2019

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Professor Rachel Bearon
Professor Rachel Bearon

The School of Physical Sciences is holding an Inaugural Lecture to celebrate the promotion to Chair of Professor Rachel Bearon on 12th June 2019 at 12 noon. The lecture will take place in Lecture Theatre D in the Central Teaching Hub.

Professor Bearon's lecture is entitled "A Mathematician’s Journey into Biology"

Abstract: Mathematics, the queen of the sciences, is at the heart of scientific discovery. I invite you to share my journey as a mathematician into the world of biology; illustrated through examples of my research projects and personal reflections of academic life. A key strand of my research is modelling planktonic (‘drifting’) cells in flow environments. I will demonstrate how mathematics can describe the interaction of fluid dynamics and biology to give insight into a wide range of applications; from bacterial chemotaxis to marine ecology. In many biological systems, such as in tissues, cells are packed tightly together, and a more recent strand of my research has been to study 3D micro-tissue dynamics; using a systems biology approach to scale up behaviour occurring at the cell level to the tissue level. This is relevant for example in studying how drugs are absorbed, in cancer progression, and (of particular surprise to me) the creative process of musical composition.