The Daily Cougar

Issue date: 7/24/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Courtesy of Suncica Canic Center for Mathematical Bioscience Director and UH professor of mathematics Suncica Canic will shepherd UH's collaborative efforts with the Texas Medical Center

Though they may appear maze-like to visitors, the ubiquitous sky bridges connecting the Texas Medical Center's numerous buildings symbolize the collaborative efforts of institutions serving as the backbone of Houston researchers' medical breakthroughs.

With the establishment of the Center for Mathematical Biosciences last spring, the University of Houston will continue to strengthen ties with the Medical Center and play a major role in this research.

"I believe the center will be an incubator for new mathematic and scientific results that will eventually lead to medical breakthroughs," said Jeff Morgan, professor and chairman of the UH Department of Mathematics. "The center will become an important training ground for the next generation of mathematicians and scientists who will help tackle important problems of interest to the community at large."

The center will provide a realm for the Mathematics Department and the Department of Biology and Biochemistry to conduct research in the city's most innovative facilities.

Other institutes involved are the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University, the Department of Statistics at Rice University, the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, the Baylor College of Medicine, the Texas Heart Institute and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Center for Mathematical Biosciences Director and UH professor of mathematics Suncica Canic said the center will provide students and researchers from various institutes with the invaluable opportunity to share their research and discuss ongoing projects.

Canic often works with researchers at the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, for her hemodynamics research projects, where she uses sophisticated mathematical models to improve vascular prosthesis, also known as stents, which would be inserted in arteries to improve blood flow. For aneurysm patients with narrowed arteries, these stents are lifesavers.

"What makes my work interesting is connecting math to real life problems. It feels good to make a difference," Canic said.

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