Victoria Booth, Ph.D., has been awarded the J.D. Crawford Prize by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Activity Group on Dynamical Systems. The award, which is presented every two years, recognizes Booth's "exceptional research in mathematical biology and, in particular, the formulation, analysis and interpretation of dynamical systems models of sleep-wake cycles."
Booth is associate professor of anesthesiology within the Medical School and professor of mathematics in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. Her research is in computational and mathematical neuroscience with a particular focus on modeling neural mechanisms for regulation of sleep-wake states, circadian rhythms, and neuromodulation.
"The influence of sleep and circadian rhythms to human health is becoming increasingly recognized. For example, sleep disruption and desynchronization of internal circadian rhythms with environmental or behavioral schedules is linked to many disease states," Booth said in a Q&A with SIAM this spring.
"With our modeling work, we hope to increase understanding of proposed physiological mechanisms governing sleep-wake behavior and how light or behavioral schedules influence the interactions of sleep and circadian processes. Better understanding of how these processes respond to perturbations may eventually lead to therapies and interventions that can mitigate adverse effects of our 24/7 lifestyles and environments."
