PROJECT AREAS AND THEMES
Professor S J Shepherd
EDT
All the projects which I offer right across the range from undergraduate Final Year B.Eng and
B.Sc, through M.Eng to graduate M.Sc level are governed by two main pinciples:
1. As Professor of Computational Mathematics, my range of interests, expertise and
experience is very wide, and as a result, I work across a wide range of disciplines.
2. All the projects I offer are always associated directly with real, ongoing research in
the various Research Groups with which I work. No projects are just “made up” for
their own sake.
Current areas and themes are:
Multi-Allele Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Association Studies (up to 6 projects
available)
I currently have an ongoing project with Dr Martin Brinkworth in Life Sciences looking at
Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Associations in Breast Cancer and other specfic diseases
believed to be of genetic origin. We have full access to the Welcome Trust database of
patients and controls. (Such access is not easily gained – Welcome only grant access to
researchers they regard as “serious” and who pass their vetting process).
The projects all involve different aspects of the analysis but all require the ability to think
deeply and laterally as well as to write some basic software analysis routines.
As the Royal Society have said, “The 20th century belonged to physics, the 21st centuy
belongs to the genome”.
This is a unique opportunity to get involved with the most important aea of Medical
Engineering now and for the next 100 years. All of the students who have done projects with
me in this area have, without exception, gone on to funded PhD study or have gained
excellent positions with major phamaceutical companies.
Hydrophobic Modelling of Protein Folding (1 project available)
This project will develop a computer model of a 3D self-avoiding walk based on the
hydrophobicity profile of residues, in order to better understand the reasons why proteins tend
to fold to a limited number of tertiary conformations.
This is critically important to computational drug discovery and the understanding of the role
of peptides in disease. This project overlaps with interests in the IPI (Institute for
Pharmaceutical Innovation).
Good programming skills required.
Foreign Exchange Markets and Hydrodynamic Turbulence (up to 3 projects available)
We are currently working with a Boutique Hedge Fund on a range of projects on modelling
Foreign Exchange (FX) markets using analogies with hydrodynamic turbulence.
Please come and discuss.
WARNING: You will need EXCELLENT mathematical and programming skills for these
projects!! These projects are also subject to certain confidentiality agreements.
Hydrodynamic Modelling of Blood Flow in the Brain (up to 4 projects available)
I curently have some onging research with Prof Clive Beggs in Multiple Sclerosis and the
possible vascular aetiology of this important disease.
It is becoming widely recognised that impaired blood flow in and around the brain may play
an important role in MS.
While Prof Beggs runs projects on the experimental aspects of blood flow, these projects
focus on the mathematical modelling of the flows. This work not only informs the
experimental procedures but has led to a series of very high quality, high impact journal
papers in leading medical journals.
Flow Measurement in Pipes (up to 3 projects available)
As a member of the Pennine Water Group R&KT Centre, I am closely involved with both
experimental and theoretical aspects of fluid flow, in particular, the phenomenon of
turbulence.
Turbulence is universally regarded as one of the three great unsolved problems in all science.
There are many opportunities here to take measurements in the UK’s leading hydraulics
laboratory here in the Chesham building, and to carry out some interesting (and potentially
publishable) analysis.
Good mathematical skills required.
Solar Physics (up to 2 projects available)
I am involved with a group of Solar Physicists who are looking at the mechanism by which
the sun generates its magnetic field. Traditional explanations postulate a dynamo mechanism
but this fails to explain the observations of sunspots over several centuries. We have recently
published a high impact paper in the Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society which
proposes a completely new model that goes along way to explaining observational data.
Projects in this area will be mathematical in nature, in particular, insights into solutions to
complex differential equations will be required.
Numerical Astronomical Calculations (up to 2 projects available)
The NASA/JPL ephemeris covers the years 3000BC to 3000AD for all bodies in the solar
system. A recent advance in numerical integration could allow the ephemeris to be extended
to 5400BC to 5400AD with an accuracy of 0.001 arc seconds. The aim of the project is to
implement a basic version of the numerical algorithm in software and check the accuracy.
21 potential projects total available