Autonomy Research Center for STEM

California State University, Northridge proposes to establish the Autonomy Research Center for STEM (ARCS), a sustainable multidisciplinary university center of excellence that will significantly contribute to NASA?s research in autonomy for civil aviation and space exploration, while transitioning and commercializing research results to address pressing industry and societal needs. In collaboration with researchers at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center and Je...

Mathematical modeling of limbic system dynamics, pathophysiology, and response to stress

Severe psychological trauma, as experienced by warfighters, can lead to long-lasting changes, per- sisting long after deployment is completed. For example, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) causes intrusive recollections, hyperarousal, anxiety and insomnia that prevent patients from leading a functional life. In the United States, roughly 20% of veterans from recent wars suffer from PTSD, underlying the s...

Collaborative Research: Understanding generation, maintenance and dynamics of immune diversity via clone-count models

Key components of the adaptive immune system of vertebrates are B cells and T cells, lymphocytes that mediate expression of antibodies and other cells to clear pathogens from a host. Each B or T cell expresses only a single variant of its receptor but genetic recombination during development generates cells with many different receptors allowing the organism to respond to broad c...

Associate Director- Visiting Researcher (Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics)

Professor Maria D?Orsogna will serve as an Associate Director at The Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM). D?Orsogna is a Professor at California State University Northridge.   The Associate Director is expected to work as a team with the Director, the second Associate Director, the Director of Special Projects, and Assistant Director to promote the mission of IPAM and engage in activities design...

Predicting and managing migration: insights from age-structured, game-theoretic, and network models

Escalating violence in the Middle East has led to a massive exodus of migrants seeking refuge in North African camps, or trying to reach Europe or North America. The refugee crisis is expected to intensify in the coming years as safety and economic conditions worsen. Since current migration policies were not crafted to handle such large scale resettlements, receiving nations and international aid o...

Analysis of Neuropoietic Cytokines and their Receptors in Diabetic Neuropathy

Diabetes is a major health and economic burden in the United States. According to statistics from the American Diabetes Association there are more than 25 million people or more than 8 percent of the population, in the US with diabetes. One of the most common complications is damage to the peripheral nervous system, a condition known as diabetic neuropathy that occurs in more than 60% of diabetics. While the precise mec...

Scalable, Stochastic and Spatiotemporal Game Theory for Real-World Human Adversarial Behavior

Work Synopsis: The contribution of Prof. D'Orsogna's group at CSUN to the MURI proposal will be to merge stochastic methodologies and game theoretical modeling within the context of criminal and insurgent behavior. We will especially focus on new scenarios such as the introduction of probabilistic strategies, fluctuations, irrational or conditioned choices within games as well as non-simultaneous dec...

Warfighter Neuroendocrinology: modeling stress response, PTSD, and TBI

Physiological response to stress is an important determinant of performance and health. Although there have been many experimental, biological studies about stress and the physiological responses it elicits, there have been few mechanistically-based mathematical models. Existing models describe the dynamics of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal system (HPA) in terms of cortisol output. Such neuroendocrine models have not been...

Cultural Analytics - IPAM

The Regents of the University of California have entered in an agreement for a visiting scientist to participate in the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics program specifically called "Culture Analytics" for the purposes of collaboration related to applied mathematics.