UT to Host Mathematics Seminar

This upcoming Monday, Feb. 8th at 4pm, in the John Sykes College of Business, room 235, the University of Tampa's Mathematics department will hold a seminar called Mathematical Models for DNA Rearrangement in Ciliates. The speaker is assistant professor, Dr. Angela Angeleska. "She uses mathematics to model biology," says Dr. Kari Fowler, also an assistant professor here at the university.




As the seminar's title suggests, Dr. Angeleska will present mathematical representations of her findings. Although this is "her first presentation at UT, she has given seminars elsewhere," according to Fowler. The model "is motivated by gene rearrangement processes that occur in some species of ciliates [a class of microorganisms]," explains Angeleska. According to the Journal of Theoretical Biology in which she has published works, her data is represented through special graphs called knot diagrams; they illustrate DNA structure in a three dimensional space.



The process she models has been "observed in a variety of cells, including cancer cells," and through this particular seminar Angeleska wishes to foster a "better understanding of the workings of those cells...[and] motivate new mathematical research and biological experiments. The presentation is intended for all UT faculty members and students. I expect that the majority of the audience will be from the departments of Biology and Mathematics." Says Angeleska. "People interested in interdisciplinary work will particularly benefit from the talk, since my idea is to present a topic where two disciplines (biology and mathematics) successfully meet."



In addition to the Journal of Theoretical Biology, Angeleska has published articles in Discrete Applied Mathematics. She is a member of the American Mathematical Society and the Association for Women in Mathematics. Her upcoming seminar has been held at several national and international conferences including Knot Theory and its Applications to Physics and Biology, Trieste, Italy, May 2009; Biomathematical Computing, Binghamton, N.Y., Nov. 2008; and the 13th International Meeting on DNA Computing, Memphis, T.N., June 2007.



For more information about this mathematics seminar please contact Dr. Kari Fowler at kfowler@ut.edu.

-Tillman