Graduate Student Seminar

Speaker 1: Jon Graf

Title

Electrical Excitation, Calcium Signaling, and Mechanical Contraction in a Calcium Induced Calcium Release Model of a Heart Cell

Abstract

Calcium dysregulation is a significant cause of fatal cardiac arrythmias, but it is an incompletely understood phenomenon and difficult to predict. Cardiac calcium levels can be modeled as a system of reaction-diffusion partial differential equations linking the electrical excitation, calcium signaling, and mechanical contraction dynamics of the heart. Recent expansion of this calcium induced calcium release model included one-way coupling from the electrical excitation to the calcium signaling system. The addition of coupling from calcium signaling to electrical excitation and full coupling between calcium signaling and mechanical contraction occurred during the 2016 REU at UMBC. This talk will emphasize the development process and key features of the complete model.

Speaker 2: John Zylstra

Title

Agreement of Solutions to the Multivariate Behrens-Fisher Problem

Abstract

The multivariate Behrens-Fisher problem tests the equality of means in two normal populations with unequal covariance matrices.  We review the literature giving approximate tests for this hypothesis and verify the approximations using simulation studies.