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Research Blog

  • mill29ca
  • Apr 11, 2022
  • 1 min read

When I first started at JMU, I got involved in an interdisciplinary group of STEM faculty trying to help a client (and a member of the team) design a better socket for his prosthetic. Although a complete novice at the time about 3D printing, my role on the team served to prepare the pitch script for the recording (see video link below) and give the presentation to investors at the Madison Trust event in 2018.


Although our client moved away from the area and the group has disbanded, I still love the idea of personalized medicine. How I address that now through my research is by offering "personalized biological tools" to help my collaborators answer the questions they have about different biological phenomena they observe. These tools can manifest as Monte Carlo simulations for mechanical or organizational phenomena due to different signaling (chemical or mechanical) conditions, or image and data analysis techniques to quantify different experimental conditions to "prove" the outcomes or targets of these experiments.



  • mill29ca
  • Mar 22, 2022
  • 2 min read

I love all aspects of the modeling process. Talking with collaborators to understand what's going on in their biological systems, researching to understand that biological system better from both the biology-side and the modeling/math-side, building a code to simulate or understand the biological system, investigating the resulting data to see what additional questions or answers arise, and the troubleshooting.


One of my recent models showed an interesting phenomena where the distribution of distances of the "spread" or stretch of the protein Obscurin was normal in x and normal in y when simulated in 2D, but was skewed in x and normal in y and z when simulated in 3D. This model is purely Monte Carlo, so randomly generated data based on a certain set of equations/rules for the geometry of the protein, which means I'd expect the spread in x, y, and z to be normally distributed with the same mean and standard deviation. It wasn't- so time to debug and understand what I did.


This is where I began using the math I learned "before." In high school, and college, where we had to learn all about domains and ranges of functions and I thought "why would I ever need to know this?" In this case, I have a bunch of trig functions that have a given domain from binomial or normal distributions (parameters set by the biology), which influences the resulting range. Noticing things like how a bimodal histogram of angles results in a skewed right distribution of cos values, and a bimodal distribution of sin values. I don't remember seeing this in a textbook, but it's pretty cool to use statistics, trig, and calculus all in one go to debug and understand the model.


Does this quick analysis answer my question: is it "right" that the x spread distribution in 3D doesn't have the same mean and standard deviation as the y and z spreads? Nope- now it's time to go back and check my modeling assumptions and double check my equations in 2D versus in 3D...

  • mill29ca
  • Oct 29, 2021
  • 1 min read

Happy Halloween! Although I dressed up as a child, my costumes were pretty routine and normal (my most unique costume request was an "apple tree" and my mom delivered). When I had my kids though, Pinterest was taking off and I got so inspired. It was the first opportunity to create my own patterns which involved a lot of trigonometry (circle skirts anyone?) and other math to match pieces and seam allowances. A few years ago, I was inspired to bring sewing to the engineering department at JMU, especially as a way to solidify math education in a tangible way. I worked with Dr. Heather Kirkvold to "shop" for the machines and supplies we'd need to get started and she has transformed the initial idea into a fully functional textile maker lab (my NSF grant hit so my attention was drawn to the image analysis and computational biology modeling work). Regardless, Dr. Kirkvold and I have become strong advocates for the use of sewing as a form of making in engineering that is essential.


In honor of sewing and its connections to engineering, enjoy some of the costumes I've created through the years, including this year's big reveal!


2013, A League of Their Own

2014, "Sisters" from White Christmas


2016, Wonder Woman & recycled A League of Their Own


2017, "Sisters" from White Christmas (new ones so they'd match)


2018, Anna and Elsa from Frozen (including machine embroidery!)


2019, Ariel, Flounder, and Sebastian from The Little Mermaid


and this year...


2021, Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather from Sleeping Beauty!











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Department of Engineering

James Madison University

801 Carrier Drive, MSC 4113

Harrisonburg, VA 22807

540-435-1874

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