Mathematical and computational modelling of endocrine interactions in humans

The aim of this project titled 'Modelling the control mechanisms underpinning hormone dynamics in humans' is to develop a mathematical understanding of hormonal regulation in the human body. Mathematical models will be used to enhance our knowledge of the body's response to perturbations when the cortisol hormone gets released (and how that compares to the normal endocrine function). This project has a strong mathematical component and involves multiple mathematical models. When it comes to mathematical modelling, I have experience in the field of epidemiology where I have learnt to develop models that help us understand the dynamics of diseases at a population-level. I believe that
the methods and knowledge can be applied in an area that is more biologically involved, such as the human body. Another mathematical method that will be used in this project is sensitivity analysis. For my masters
project (which I am currently busy with), I am performing simulation-based validation to evaluate the performance of a model that predicts the number of reinfections of SARS-CoV-2. A big part of this project involves sensitivity analysis on the different parameters that are used to generate the dataset. Evidently, programming will be a big part of the project and coding is something I thoroughly enjoy. One
of my undergraduate majors was in Computer Science and I currently work as a software developer. For my MSc project, I am using R Programming language on a cluster to evaluate the model mentioned above, and I have expanded the model to include third infections of SARS-CoV-2. For my Honours project in 2021, I used Python to extract Tweets from Twitter along with Natural Language Processing to identify key vaccine-related topics that are being discussed.
I enjoy understanding different fields and areas of research and I therefore find the interdisciplinary part of this project exciting. I have always had an interest in biology. In my first year of university, I completed a course in biology and I completed my honours degree in biomathematics. One of the courses that I participated in during my honours year was called "Biophysics at the Microscale" which described physics at the cell-level. The impact of epidemiology on decision-making on a national and provincial level has been demonstrated to me over the past two years. The outcome of this project will hopefully impact decision-making on a clinical level. Applying mathematics on the population-level (epidemiology) has been very interesting and I have learnt a lot from it. I would love to explore the application of mathematics in biology on a deeper layer such as the human body, which is why I believe that this project would be the ideal project for me.