Thursday, September 5, 2013, 3pm
Location: Room 1110 of the Nguyen Engineering Building

Jason Kinser
School of Physics, Astronomy, and Computational Sciences
George Mason University

Modelling of F-Actin Fibers within Constrained Geometries

Abstract
Understanding the mechanics of a cell and how these mechanics react to diseases and pharmaceutical treatments is a key to providing effective treatment for some very difficult diseases.  This project creates tools to simulate F-acting fiber structures in cells with constricted geometries.  These simulations are driven by optimizing several energy terms and the result is an indication as to how each energy is required to create the realistic images.  Knowledge of these terms are then interpreted to determine the changes in the cell brought on by the disease or treatment.

Brief biography
Dr. Jason Kinser has been on faculty at GMU for 17 years and taught in several departments including SPACS, CSI, Bioinformatics, Biology and Forensic Sciences.  He has been a visiting scientist at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH-Stockholm), the University of Mauritius, the Korean University, Berkeley National Lab and Frederick National Lab.  He has authored texts on bioinformatics applications in python and on pulsed image processing.