Heart modeling, simulation focus of professor's talk

Peskin

Charles S. Peskin, professor of mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, will delve into matters of the heart during his first lecture as a Cornell University Andrew D. White Visiting Professor. The subject of Peskin's free public talk will be "Muscle and Blood: Secrets of the Heart Revealed by Mathematical Modeling and Computer Simulation," on Wednesday, March 9, at 7:30 p.m. in Rockefeller Hall's Schwartz Auditorium.

Peskin, also a member of NYU's Center for Neural Science, will take part in a biophysics colloquium, a neurobiology and behavior colloquium and a Cornell fluid dynamics seminar while on campus through March 11.

Through the application of mathematics and computing to biology and medicine, Peskin has worked on problems of blood flow in the heart, computer-assisted design of prosthetic cardiac valves, fiber architecture of the heart and its valves, fluid dynamics of the inner ear, photon noise in vision and nuclear medicine and Brownian ratchet dynamics of bio-molecular motors. He is the inventor of the immersed boundary method, which is broadly useful for problems of biological fluid dynamics.

Peskin completed his undergraduate studies in engineering and applied physics at Harvard University in 1968. He received a Ph.D. in physiology in 1972 from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. His teaching at NYU ranges from graduate courses such as "Mathematical Aspects of Heart Physiology" to a freshman seminar on computer simulation.

Peskin is a former MacArthur Fellow and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and also of the Institute of Medicine. For further information about his visit, contact Gerri Jones in the A.D. White office at 255-0832.