Fundamental principles of fluid mechanics and mass transport will be applied to biological systems at the cellular, tissue, and organ levels. The topics of this course will be the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, transmembrane and transvascular transport, cell adhesion and intracellular transport, drug transport and pharmacokinetics, and transport-related diseases (atherosclerosis, sickle cell disease, embolism, cancer metastasis).

Fundamental principles of continuum mechanics will be applied to problems of biomechanics at the cellular level. Topics covered include structure of mammalian cells, cell membrane mechanics, mechanics of the cytoskeleton, models of cell viscoelasticity, cell adhesion, active cell processes, flow-induced deformation of blood cells, and experimental techniques (micropipette aspiration, biointerface probe, atomic force microscopy, magnetic twisting cytometry, optical tweezers, and flow chamber assays).

The objective of this graduate course is to provide students with the skills and knowledge necessary for computational modeling of biological and physiological systems and interpretation and analysis of biological data using computational techniques. The course will cover elements of programming and introduction to computational biostatistics, bioinformatics and medical imaging. It will immerse the students in specific biomedical applications such as neural dynamics, protein-protein docking, ultrasound imaging, and cellular and tissue biomechanics. Most lectures will be accompanied by computer labs. This course counts toward the Masters in Computational Science.