In silico testing of smooth muscle contractility

This project aims to develop a computational framework that emulates organ bath experiments used to study smooth muscle responses to drugs, with an initial focus on intestinal tissue and well-characterized agonists and antagonists. The student will conduct a targeted literature review to extract quantitative data such as dose–response curves and force–time traces, and implement a basic pharmacodynamic model as a foundation for a simple state-space representation linking drug concentration to tissue contraction/ relaxation. Using the literature data, the student will perform parameter estimation and then analysis to compare model predictions with published results. Through this work, the student will gain experience in literature synthesis, quantitative modeling, and reproducible research practices, while contributing to an early-stage “in silico organ bath” concept that could later be expanded across tissues and drug classes. In addition, the student will be expected to co-author on a resulting manuscript.