Course Content

The Summer School will run from Sunday afternoon on 19th July, to Friday afternoon on 24th July 2009. An outline timetable is available here.

The summer school will be lead by experts in the field of model validation for biomedical systems and will consist of a combination of plenary sessions and group tutorial seesions. Students will also have the opprtunity to use computer based validation software as part of the tutorial sessions.  The Monday will be dedicated to a series of lectures covering the whole spectrum of model validation from experimental design through identifiability analysis and parameter estimation to physical experiment and result analsis.   On Tuesday to Thursday three major application areas will be covered:  cardio-respiratory modelling, pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic modelling and biochemical modelling.  The week ends with group problem solving exercises the results of which will be presented to the other students and faculty.

Course preparation

It is anticipated that course participants will come from a wide variety of backgrounds. In order to achieve maximum benefit from the Summer School a selection of mathematical problems is available here which participants are encouraged to complete prior to attending.

Sunday 19th July

Registration is from 2.30-3pm. After an introductory welcome and talk, all students will complete competency tests to ensure tutor groups are appropriately balanced. This will ensure that the support offered to participants during the course is appropriate to their needs.

Monday 20th July

The first full day will concentrate on revision of the basic mathematical and statistical techniques used in model validation and will introduce concepts key to the application of model validation techniques. The format of the day will comprise plenary teaching sessions covering experimental design, structural and numerical identifiability analysis, parameter estimatio techniques, sensitvitiy analysis techniques and model robustness.  The emphasis throughout will be to achieve an understanding of the application of the techniques described to problems in biomedical engineering. 

Tuesday 21st July 

Cardio-respiratory modelling:  the day will cover all aspects of validating cardio-respiratory models including the problems of verifying models incorporating multiple modelling approaches.  The session will also cover validating 3D models and performing sensitivity analyses on cardio-respiratory models.

Wednesday 22nd July

Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic modelling: the day will cover the identifiability analysis for PK-PD models together with lectures on performing sensitvity analyses and determining the robustness of such models.

Thursday 23rd July  

Biochemical modelling:  these present very specific problems for validation because they describe systems that react very rapidly.  This problem of rapid reactions will be specifically addressed together with statistical approaches to parameter estimation and sensitivity analysis.

Problem solving activity (Thursday 23rd & Friday 24th July)

Mathematical modelling is not a spectator sport and competence and familiarity only comes with practice. Using contemporary problems from the fields of cardio-respiratory modelling, pharmacokinetic and phmaracodynamic modelling and biochemical modelling participants will divide into groups to explore mathematical solutions to problems in one of these areas. The problems will be introduced in the late morning of Day 4 and work on solutions will start in the afternoon, continue through the evening of Day 4 and the first part of the morning of Day 5. The groups will report their preliminary solutions back to all the Summer School participants, and its faculty, during the latter part of the morning of Day 5.  All participants will be encouraged to discuss solutions developed and contribute ideas in order that they can be refined and improved.