Kirsten Fagnan Graduate Student
Address:	University of Washington Department of Applied Mathematics Box 352420 Seattle, WA 98195-2420 USA
Office Phone:	206-543-0319
Fax:	206-685-1440
E-mail:	kfagnan at amath washington edu
Office:	CDH 810A/B

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Biographical information

I am a fifth year graduate student in the Applied Mathematics department. I am working on a Ph.D. with Randy LeVeque and my areas of specialization are numerical analysis and partial differential equations. I am from Northern California and miss the sunshine during the winter months, but Seattle is a great place to live in the summer! When I'm not at school I enjoy biking, rock climbing, tennis and anything that involves being outside!

• Curriculum Vitae
• Research Statement

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Research Interests

I am currently working on numerical model of shockwave propagation in tissue and bone with an application to Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy (ESWT). ESWT is a noninvasive treatment for a variety of musculoskeletal conditions including delayed healing of bone fractures, tendonitis, plantar fasciitis and neovascularization. It is thought that the regions heal because of an increase in angiogenesis; however, the physical mechanisms that cause the formation of new blood vessels are not well understood.

I would like to better understand how cells respond to short-term environmental changes like those which caused by ESWT treatment. In addition to investigating the cellular response, I would like to consider the effect of the shock wave at the tissue level in terms of how the cytoskeleton and cell-cell adhesions change, and whether or not these changes are enough to elicit the observed biological response. Last year I was funded by the Marie Curie Research Training Network to live in Greece and work with Daphne Manoussaki at the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH). Our study group worked on mathematical modeling of cellular responses to mechanical forces and changes to the material properties of their micro-environment.

ESWT Research Mathbio Study Group

Papers

Proceedings from the 11th International Conference on Hyperbolic ProblemsENS, Lyon, France, July 2006. Submitted

Conference Participation

• EMS Summer School: Mathematics in Molecular Cell Biology RICAM, Linz, Austria
  
• HYP2006: International Conference on Hyperbolic Problems ENS, Lyon, France, July 2006.
  
• 2006 PIMS Graduate Mathematical Modeling Camp, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada
  
• 2006 PIMS Industrial Problem Solving Workshop, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada
  
• IPAM Cells and Materials: At the Interface between Mathematics, Biology and Engineering, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
  
• AMGSC, 2006 Applied Mathematics Graduate Student Conference, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada
  
• 2005 Harvey Mudd Conference on Applied MathematicsHarvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA
  

Presentations and Posters

• EMS Summer School Presentation
• HYP2006 Presentation
• ESWT Poster
  
• AMGSC Presentation
  
• General Exam
  

Honors and Awards

• MCRTN Marie Curie Research Training Network Fellow 2007
• VIGRE Fellow 2004
  
• ARCS Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Founders Fellow, 2003-2005
  
• Graduate School Top Scholar Award, 2003