Regina Week 2 – IPSW 20 June, 2008

The IPSW week is ending today, so it is time for a new post.

I worked on the problem of modeling cancer cells growth and trying to find the best combination of anti-angiogenic drugs, chemotherapy and radiotherapy in terms of dosage, frequency, scheduling and side effects.

The problem proved to be *H*U*G*E* and extremely difficult (of course! ). We worked on many different aspects of the problem and we learned a lot in the process.

During the past week, I had the chance to learn many things about Partial Differential Equations (PDEs), since I was trying to solve a 3 coupled PDEs system. I learned how to use Maple’ s PDE features (thanks to Matt) which has A LOT of weaknesses and also the COMSOL Multiphysics program, for modeling of this kind of difficult problems. I also remembered the LaTeX Beamer presentation features.

But the last week was not only about work.

We had the chance to go for kayaking in the beautiful Wascana Center lake, I played a lot of basketball (until I turned my ankle yesterday ) and some cards and we also watched Iron Man in an almost empty cinema where we bought some HUGE pop corn bags!

P.S. 1 : Firefox 3 was released this week, so you can see above an interesting screenshot that I was lucky to take.

P.S. 2 : Google Code Jam 2008 registration already began. First Prize $10,000 plus a free trip to the Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California for the finals!