Sarah Olson, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Worcester Polytechnic Institute – Applied Mathematics Colloquium

Title: Dynamics of movement in complex environments

Abstract: In this talk, we will highlight two different types of movement in viscosity dominated environments: sperm navigation and centrosome clustering in dividing cells.  Sperm often interact with chemicals and other proteins in the fluid, changing force generation and emergent swimming trajectories. Recently developed computational methods and asymptotic analysis allow for insight into swimming efficiency and hydrodynamic interactions of swimmers in different fluid environments. We will also show how parameter estimation techniques can be utilized to infer fluid and/or swimmer properties. For the case of centrosome movement, we explore how cancer cells are able to cluster additional centrosomes and proceed through either a bipolar or multipolar division. The models focus on understanding centrosome movement during cell division, which is the result of complex interactions between stochastic microtubule dynamics and motor proteins in the viscous cytoplasm of the cell.