Author: Mikhail Blinov

The 26th Annual CompCellBio workshop

February 28, 2025. The 26th Computational Cell Biology workshop took place ONLINE for the 5 days, February 24-28th. Cell biologists and biophysicists leaned how to use VCell (https://vcell.org/), COPASI (https://copasi.org/ ) and SpringSalad (https://vcell.org/ssalad) software to develop spatial and non-spatial models using deterministic, stochastic, agent- and rule-based approaches.

The course included introductions to VCell, COPASI, and SpringSaLaD, presented by their developers and by modelers. Some participants participated in one-on-one sessions with experienced modelers designed to help with your projects. See the tentative schedule HERE.
Instructors: Michael Blinov, Ann Cowan, Stefan Hoops, Leslie Loew, Pedro Mendes, Ion Moraru, Jim Schaff, and Boris Slepchenko.

Dr. Blinov’s publication in NPJ SysBio

February 4, 2025. Dr. Blinov’s publication in NPJ Systems Biology and Applications details how to use AI tools to investigate systems biology resources related to mathematical modeling: Kannan, M., Bridgewater, G., Zhang, M., & Blinov, M. L. (2025). Leveraging public AI tools to explore systems biology resources in mathematical modeling. npj Systems Biology and Applications11(1), 15: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41540-025-00496-z

Remarkably, Meera Kannan and Gabrielle Bridgewater are two high school student interns who worked on this project under Dr. Blinov’s supervision during the

Dr. Kshitiz publication in Advanced Materials Technologies

January 22, 2025. A collaboration led by Kazunori Hoshino lab in UConn Storrs, Kshitiz lab at CCAM tested how human endometrial cells change their mechanics in anticipation of decidualization. A recent paper published in Advanced Materials Technologies describes how cells become stiffer, but amazingly, when cells from placenta interact with them, they reverse this stiffening.