Murad Banaji
Research Fellow
Currently at University of Essex, but physically based in the
Department of Medical Physics, UCL
Malet Place Engineering Building
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
UK
Phone: (44-20) 7679 0278
Fax: (44-20) 7679-0255
Murad Banaji
Phone: (44-20) 7679 0278
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Courses currently taught (UCL maths):
Dynamical Systems and Chaos (MATH3509)
Publications: Full list available here.
Current research:
From 2001-2006, much of my research centred on constructing a computational model of the human brain circulation. This involved looking at the physiology in quite a lot of detail, trying to decide what is important, trying to translate that into the language of mathematics and then trying to code it all up. It was a huge task, and is far from complete, but I believe worthwhile - see the model website for more. I periodically build on this model, with the aid of project students. I also created and am still working on an open source biological modelling environment, designed to make it easy for non-mathematicians to create and simulate biological models. I have just written a translator from SBML allowing import of SBML models into the interface, which is listed on the SBML website.
There are several strands of current research. I am particularly interested in networks which arise in biology and chemistry (e.g. chemical reaction networks or gene networks) and what claims one can make about their behaviour from knowledge only of their structure. This theoretical work involves use of a variety of mathematical ideas, with a particular emphasis on three ideas: injectivity, monotonicity, and logarithmic norms, all of which have proved useful when making claims about biological/chemical networks. Parallel to this theoretical work I have also been working to construct numerical models of actual biological systems, including much recent work on mitochondria, fundamental to cellular energy production. At a very practical clinical level, I am interested in interpreting signals which can be obtained noninvasively, particularly from the brain, and particularly using near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS).
Academic history:
In 2001 I finished a PhD in the maths department of Queen Mary , University of London, supervised by Paul Glendinning, now at Manchester. From 2001-2007 I was employed by the MIAS-IRC jointly funded by the EPSRC and MRC, working on models of the cerebral circulation. In parallel, since 2005 I have been a part-time lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at UCL, teaching a course (above), supervising a PhD student and maintaining close collaborations in the department. Since October 2007 I have been working on an EPSRC funded grant held jointly by Chris Cooper in the Department of Biological Sciences at the university of Essex and Clare Elwell in the Department of Medical Physics at UCL. The project is entitled "A multidisciplinary approach to non invasive optical measurements of cellular energetics in the human brain." I spend much of my time physically based at UCL, although my primary employment is at Essex.
PhD student:
I co-supervised a PhD student Pete Donnell, along with Steve Baigent. Pete recently completed (successfully) an impressive thesis on qualitative modelling of biological systems - making claims about the dynamics of biological systems based on limited knowledge about the structure of interactions between their elements (see this page for more on qualitative models, a link will be added to Pete's thesis when it goes online).
Recreational maths stuff:
Have a look at this page for some fun recreational maths stuff.
Some other scientific interests:
Other interests:
Too many to detail... film, music, South Asia, languages and politics to start with. Here's a really good site to start at if you're concerned about the world . I think scientists, like everyone else, have social responsibilities beyond their immediate research.