Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Neuroscience Peter Thomas picks up a compact bundle of metal tubes. "My office is in King, and my lab is in the science center, so I find myself running back and forth a lot," he explains, unfolding what turns out to be an adult-sized scooter. "I use this to get around."

Thomas, in his first year at the College, fills the mathematics department's applied mathematics position, created six years ago to encourage an interdisciplinary relationship between mathematics and the natural sciences. His computational biomathematics laboratory, or CBL, is housed in the physics department, but there are no beakers or Bunsen burners in the room. A white dry-erase board and five Macintosh computers equipped with a high-level technical computing language called MATLAB are his instruments of choice.

"We wanted to have an applied mathematician whose expertise is technically in differential equations, which, in principle, allows one to predict the future," explains Michael Henle, chair of the mathematics department.

And with a background in philosophy and neuroscience, Thomas certainly fits the bill. Currently, his research focuses on principles of communication and control in networks of nerve cells as well as on systems of biochemical reactions used by cells to communicate with one another and known as "signal transduction networks." These areas blend computation, mathematics, neuroscience, cell biology, biochemistry, information theory, and philosophical imponderables.

He is also hard at work examining mathematical and computer modeling systems, or the simulation of real life. With an accurate modeling system, experimenters can test the effectiveness of their method and approach before performing the actual experiment, saving time, money, and lab rats. In some cases, the virtual experiment can even replace real-life procedures, a capability that fits senior Peter Kruskal's interests perfectly.

A math major, Kruskal's interests began to shift toward neuroscience after he spent last summer at the University of Arizona, where he worked on a model that would mimic the brain activity in rats. By teaming up with Thomas, he was able to continue his research when he returned to Oberlin.

"Working with Peter Thomas seemed like a great way to do math and neuroscience," Kruskal says. "He has definitely helped me get an idea of how one can mix mathematics and biology."

Thomas and Kruskal are collaborating with researchers at the University of Arizona, who record cell activity in the brains of rats and send the data and a list of times each cell is said to have fired back to them. The information is used to determine what a sample population of neurons is doing.

"I'm looking at the correlations between all pairs of cells," Kruskal explains. "I'm seeing how well cell firings are correlated during a learning behavior and following sleep. There is a lot of potential for doing further and more complex analysis on this data."

Thomas believes he and Kruskal may have collected enough data on the analysis of the statistical structure of the spike patterns to merit a submission to next year's Society for Neuroscience Conference.

In addition to Kruskal, Thomas works with several other students. However, one of them, double-degree senior Joe Kimmel, wasn't initially drawn to the professor's lab because of any interest in math or science.

"I wrote to Thomas during the summer and asked if he was interested in having someone with a computer science background in his lab, and he said he was," Kimmel recalls. Kimmel currently works in the CBL, developing a computational model of the chemical circuitry for information processing in a signal transduction network of the social amoebum. He hopes to continue his work on biochemical signaling next year as an honors project with Thomas.

Senior Rebecca Ganetzky, a computer science and biology major, also spent this past year in the CBL, using MATLAB to develop a stochastic simulation of the polymerization kinetics of FtsZ, a key component of cell division in prokaryotes. Ganetzky's work has been so successful that Thomas and Laura Romberg, assistant professor of biology, used part of an $8,000 Mellon grant they received in April to hire a chemistry student with an extensive computer science background to work on developing a model over the summer.

"My strategy for making research work at Oberlin is to blend laboratory research and coursework," Thomas says.

It's a strategy that seems to breed success.

Course Catalog: Mathematics Department of Mathematics Course Catalog: Neuroscience Department of Neuroscience