Philip G. McQueen
- e-mail: mcqueenp@mail.nih.gov
- Tel: (301) 594-2901
General Information
- Ph.D: University of Maryland.
- Research interests: applied mathematical problems in biology and medicine.
One time I attended a conference about non-linear dynamics in which a raucous debate erupted over the value
of modeling of biological systems. A colleague got up and said something to the effect, "People often make some
pronouncement in biology, without fully understanding the consequences of what they have proposed. We need
modeling to understand those consequences." One purpose of modeling, of course, is to make a utilitarian forecast,
such as the outcome of a disease in a patient given clinical input. However, often we do not know the processes
(or interaction between them) which may be important in a biological system, or even if we do, the range
of parameters which define those processes are uncertain. But we can ask the following questions: suppose
we suspect some biochemical or biomechanical or immulogical process influences some biological system? Then
what would be the logical outcome of the presence of this process as values of the defining parameters are varied
in magnitude? How might the process manifest itself in bench-side experiments or in epidemiological field studies?
And if there is no empirical evidence for the effect, then what might that tell us as well? Understanding the
consequences of a hypothesis with ruthless logic, I think, is one of the most important purposes of mathematical
modeling in biology.
Current Projects
- Population dynamics of pathogens, especially in Plasmodium infections. (Work done in collaboration with members of the Fogerty International Center, and the Laboratory of Malaria and Vector Research, NIAID.)
- Microdissection of tissues samples via optical means. (This is a intra-institute project done with collaborators in NICHD, NCI, and DCB/CIT.)
Selected Papers
(For a comprehensive listing of my publications, see my entries on the DCB publication database.)
2008: Philip G. McQueen and F. Ellis McKenzie, "Host Control of Malaria Infections: Constraints on Immune and Erythropoeitic Response Kinetics," PLoS Computational Biology, vol. 5, URL: http://www.ploscompbiol.org/doi/pcbi.1000149
2004: Luis A Parada, Philip G McQueen, and Tom Misteli, "Tissue-specific spatial organization of genomes," Genome Biology, vol. 5, URL http://genomebiology.com/2004/5/7/R44
2004: Philip G. McQueen and F. Ellis McKenzie, "Age-structured red blood cell susceptibility and the dynamics of malaria infections," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 101, pp. 1961-1966.
1998: Seth R. Goldstein, Philip G. McQueen, and Robert F. Bonner, "Thermal modeling of Laser Capture Microdissection," Applied Optics, vol. 37, pp. 7378- 7391.
Contact
- Philip G. McQueen
- Mathematical and Statistical Computing Laboratory
- Center for Information Technology
- National Institutes of Health
- Bldg 12A, Rm. 2003
- Bethesda, MD 20892-5620
- Tel: (301) 594-2901
- Fax: (301) 402-4544
- e-mail: mcqueenp@mail.nih.gov
- Mathematical and Statistical Computing Laboratory
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Last updated: August 26, 2008
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