UW Department of Applied Mathematics

Faculty Adjuncts & Affiliates Staff Students Alumni

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: 408 Guggenheim Hall

Applied Math Half-marathon Team Fundraiser

Please help support our team as we run 13.1 miles to raise money to support graduate students in the Applied Math department. Last year our team ran with the Graduate School and raised over $175,000 for graduate student fellowships. This year our goal is to raise $20,000 in order to fund summer positions specifically for Applied Math grad students. For more information click here.

Biographical information

I am in my final year in the UW Applied Mathematics Ph.D. program. My thesis advisor is 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!

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. During my time in graduate school 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.

Conference Participation

Presentations and Posters

Honors and Awards

UW Applied Math People Courses Research Seminars Departmental
<kfagnan@amath.washington.edu>