Publicly Offered Research
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (Research in a proposed research area)
This work will focus on wound healing in two-dimensional cellular tissues, as a topic at the intersection of physics, biology, and control theory. The purpose of this work is to learn more about how collective behavior of multicellular systems has evolved and whether it is optimal in a control theoretic sense. We will employ mechanics based modeling, modeling of decision-making by cells, and optimal control frameworks to address this question.
I set out to study how wound healing can be interpreted as a process of collective behavior which has evolved to be optimal, as in optimizing a utility function.However, it became necessary to study the control theoretic approach of the project in a more contained situation and I identified the study of epidemics as a suitable target, both for its general importance as a subject and its reduced simulation complexity as compared to a full tissue simulation.In two studies, we studied social distancing behavior of populations as it arises from individuals optimizing their own decisions, balancing infection costs with the costs of avoiding contacts with others, e.g. worsening their economic situation or psychological health. We studied how social distancing is affected by the expectation of a vaccination: People social distance more strongly the earlier they expect a vaccine to arrive and the more certain they are about its early arrival time. We also showed how social distancing is affected by limited capacity in the healthcare system. Finally, we demonstrated how governments can design incentives to help individuals make optimal decisions.I hope that these findings will affect how governments communicate about the state of an epidemic, vaccination development, and that it will help design better government interventions in future epidemics. I hope that this will also transfer into additional understanding of optimal collective behavior in other systems such as cellular tissues.
令和5年度が最終年度であるため、記入しない。
All 2024 2023 2022
All Journal Article (3 results) (of which Int'l Joint Research: 3 results, Peer Reviewed: 3 results, Open Access: 3 results) Presentation (11 results) (of which Int'l Joint Research: 5 results, Invited: 4 results)
PLOS ONE
Volume: 18 Issue: 7 Pages: e0288963-e0288963
10.1371/journal.pone.0288963
PLOS Computational Biology
Volume: 19 Issue: 10 Pages: e1011533-e1011533
10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011533
Physical Review Research
Volume: 4 Issue: 3 Pages: 033156-033156
10.1103/physrevresearch.4.033156
