Achievement

IGERT trainee Cassie Mitchell (PhD 2009) developed relational modeling and analysis techniques to predict the mechanisms and dynamics of various physiologies and pathologies. The techniques enabled the development or comprehensive, multi-scalar models of systems that are intractable to traditional mechanistic modeling techniques. The methods facilitate the elucidation of mechanisms that underlie the emergent properties of complex biological systems, giving predictive insights that can be used to generate testable hypotheses from computational models or from experimental and clinical data. The technique has been successfully used to produce the first-ever comprehensive view of spinal cord injury that accurately predicts previously unknown dynamics of 20 common metrics of SCI for up to 16 hours post insult. This model was utilized as a test bed to predict the results of over 50,000 different combinatorial therapeutic treatment strategies.