Marcella Torres, Ph.D

Title: Developing an ODE model of immune response to inhaled toxicants and antioxidants with undergraduate researchers

Abstract. This talk includes both a research and educational component. I will discuss how I involved undergraduate students from very diverse math backgrounds, none with a prior differential equations course, in the ongoing development of a differential equations model of immune response to inhaled toxicants with antioxidant interventions. More than 4 million people die prematurely from inhalation of indoor toxicants, such as wood smoke, due to improper ventilation. These outcomes result, in part, from dysregulation of epithelial and macrophage cell function in the presence of inhaled toxicants. Our work includes collaboration with a colleague in biology to allow math students to perform wet lab work and collect in vitro data that is used to estimate model parameters. The goal of the project is to develop a model including macrophages of two phenotypes, epithelial cells, pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines, and wood smoke, for simulation of antioxidant interventions. I will discuss how we approach this goal via the development of simpler submodels for which we can estimate parameters using our cytokine level measurements, and some surprising student outcomes and future directions.