Mathematical Sciences Department
Applied Math Seminar
Speaker: Dane Johnson, WPI PhD Student
Thursday, November 16, 2023
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Unity Hall 405
Title: Adaptive Biological Transport Networks
Abstract: Some recent studies have developed mathematical models to account for the morphogenesis of biological fluid networks such as plant and animal vasculature, slime molds, and fungal mycelia by idealizing as a network of thin fluid conducting channels, abstracted as a graph where edges represent these channels and vertices represent points of branching or anastomosis. As Hagen-Poiseuille flow passes through the network, solute may be absorbed by the surrounding medium or by the network for maintenance and growth. Methods of this sort can be organized using a framework called network automata, which describes the case where there is a dynamic process taking place on the network that both depends on its structure but is also capable of modifying it. I attempt to model the early development of a fungal mycelium as a network of hyphae in order to investigate foraging and cord formation.