Stephen J. Merrill - Professor of Mathematics
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Major Research Interests
- Mathematical models in immunology utilizing a variety of methods including differential equations and stochastic techniques
- The role of randomness in dynamical systems
- Creativity and dreaming
- The mechanism of action of medicinal herbs
- Cardiac Imaging
- Atrial Fibrillation
- Thyroid disease
- Malaria Control
- Nanotoxicology and the toxicology of novel compounds released from medical devices
Education and Visiting Positions
- PhD in Mathematics from University of Iowa. Mathematical genealogy.
- Visiting Positions
- Lefschetz
Center for Dynamical Systems (
- Santa Fe Institute (Program in Theoretical Immunology)
- Center for Nonlinear Studies and Theoretical Biology and Biophysics (Los Alamos National Lab)
- FDA, Center for Devices and Radiologic Health (Division of Biology) 2012-13
Current and Recent Research
- Modeling of the role of cofactors in an HIV infection ( this work has been reviewed in New Scientist 6 September, 1997, p. 12 : HIV's hidden helpers)
- Markov chain analysis of heart rate variability
- Quantitative description of immune reconstitution after stem cell transplantation with St. Luke's Hospital in Milwaukee
- Diversity
in the HCV genome with the
- Modeling of the microarray
- Teaching the creative process
- Modeling changes in the neurological exam with age
- Cardiac imaging – registration
- Hashmitoto’s thyroiditis and thyroid cancer
Recent Talks and Posters
- ISL July 2006
- SMB/SIAM Life Sciences August 2006
- Society For Neuroscience poster October 2006
- Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences July 2008
- SIAM Computational Science and Engineering March 2009
- Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences Workshop July 2009
- Dept of EECE at Marquette University, April 2010
- North American Meeting on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (NAMIAM 2010), December, 2010
- SCTPLS August 2011 (Workshop Talk – Markov Chains)
- SCTPLS August 2011 (Thyroid Cancer)
- 5th International Nonlinear Science Conference (Barcelona) March 2012 (Creativity)
- CDRH (FDA) April 2012 (Models of Life)
- CDER (FDA) June 2012 (Modeling Complexity)
Editorial Positions
- Section Editor: Software Notices, Journal of Immunological Methods (1993-2006)
- Section Editor: Computational Models in Immunology, Journal of Immunological Methods
- Editorial Board: Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences
- Vladimir Brusic (Harvard) and Stephen J. Merrill are guest editors of a special issue of the
Journal of Immunological Methods (vol. 374 issues 1-2) in November 2011 :
High-throughput methods for immunology:
Machine learning and automation
This is one of the first collections of papers in the new field of “Immunomics”, a subfield of Bioinformatics.
The issue also reported the results of the machine learning competition on prediction of HLA class I binding peptides.
Most Recent Publications
- S.J. Merrill, R.J. DeBoer, and A.S. Perelson, Development of the T-cell repertoire: clone size distribution, Rocky Mt. J. Math., 24 (1994) 213-231.
- S.J. Merrill and J. R. Cochran, Markov chain methods in the analysis of heart rate variability, Fields Institute Comm., 11 (1997) 241-252.
- R.S. Root-Bernstein and S.J. Merrill, The necessity of cofactors in the pathogenesis of AIDS: A mathematical model, J. Theor. Biol., 187 (1997) , 135-146.
- S.J.
Merrill and R.S. Root-Bernstein, A model of the role of cofactors in the
initiation and development of AIDS,
- S.J. Merrill, Computational Models in immunological methods: an historical review, J. Immunol. Meth., 126 (1998) ,69-92. web-version
- B.M. Murphy, S.J. Merrill, and A. LeFever, The engraftment kinetics of white blood cells and platelets following peripheral blood stem cell transplantation, Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Computing & Mathematical Modeling, Milwaukee, WI, June 2000, 209-212.
- R.S. Root-Bernstein and S.J. Merrill, Etiology and Pathogenesis of AIDS, in AIDS and Complementary and Alternative Medicine, L.J. Standish, C. Calabrese, and M.L. Galantino (eds.), Churchill-Livingstone (2002), 31-50.
- S.J.
Merrill and S.E. Merrill, Introductory biological sequence analysis
through spreadsheets, Proc. of 13th ICTCM,
- H. Wang, T. Bian, S.J. Merrill, and D.D. Eckels, Sequence variation in the gene encoding the non-structural 3 protein of hepatitis C virus: Evidence for immune selection, J. Mol. Evol. 54 (2002), 465-473.
- S.J. Merrill and B.M. Murphy, Detecting autocatalytic dynamics in data modeled by a compartmental model, Math. Biosci. 180 (2002), 255-262.
- S.J. Merrill, Solving problems: perchance to dream, in ICTMA 11: Mathematical Modelling: A Way of Life, S.J. Lamon, W.A. Parker, and S.K. Houston (eds.), Chichester, UK: Horwood Publishing, Ltd. (2003), 97-105.
- S.J.
Merrill, S. Nelson, and C.A. Struble, Spatial dependence of hybridization
in the cDNA microarray,
- S.J. Merrill, The stochastic dance of early HIV infection, J. Comp. Appl. Math. 184 (2005), 242-257.
- S.J. Merrill, To again feel the creative voice, Int. J. of Sci. and Math. Ed., 5 (2007), 145-164.
- S.J. Merrill, B. Myklebust, J. Myklebust, N. Reynolds, and E. Duthie, A Poisson-like model of sub-clinical signs from the examination of healthy aging subjects, Aging Clinical and Experimental Research, 20 (2008), 368-375.
- E. Tick, S. Merrill, and A. Huber, Sheepish: Health store as healing sanctuary, Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, 4 (2008), 63-65.
- J. Blimke, J. Myklebust, H. Volkmer, S. Merrill, Four-shell ellipsoidal model employing multipole expansion in ellipsoidal coordinates, Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing, 46 (2008), 859-869.
- S.J. Merrill, The state of the science of nonlinear dynamics in 1963, Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology and Life Sciences, 13 (2009) 249-256.
- Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed, Dennis Brylow, Rong Ge, Praveen Madiraju, Steve Merrill, Craig Struble, and Jim Early, Computational Thinking in the Sciences: A Three Day Workshop For High School Science Teachers, In Proceedings of SIGCSE 2010: The 41st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, pages 42-46, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, March 2010.
- S.J. Merrill, Markov Chains for identifying nonlinear dynamics, Chapter 17 in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences Using Real Data, Stephen J. Guastello and Robert A.M. Gregson, eds., CRC Press, 2010, 401-423.
- S. S. Kiware, N. Chitnis, S. J. Moore, G. J. Devine, S. Majambere, S. Merrill, and G. F. Killeen, Simplified models of vector control impact upon malaria transmission by zoophagic mosquitoes, PLoS ONE, 7(5):e37661 (2012) doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0037661
- B. Pandiyan, S.J. Merrill, and S. Benvenga, A patient-specific model of the negative-feedback control of the hypothalamus–pituitary–thyroid (HPT) axis in autoimmune
(Hashimoto’s) thyroiditis, Mathematical Medicine and Biology (2013) doi:10.1093/imammb/dqt005
Doctoral Students
1988 Xuncheng Huang Mathematical analysis of population models
1992 Ondine Harris The Polymerase
Chain Reaction: A Stochastic Model,
Methods of Quantification, and Applications to HIV
1993 Zhixiong He Mathematical models of muscle response to periodic stimuli
1996 Xing Wu Dynamical systems in the modeling of lampry fictive swimming
2001 Brian Murphy Modeling the time to engraftment of white blood
cells and platelets following
autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplantation
2008 Shivani Ratnakumar Markov
chain modeling of ECG gated live left atrial fluoroscopy variability
to establish a well-defined basis for rigid registration to a 3D CT image
2011 Balamurugan
Pandiyan Mathematical modeling and
dynamical analysis of the operation of the
hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid
(HPT) axis in autoimmune (Hashimoto’s) thyroiditis
Current Doctoral Students
Prachi Pradeep Custom QSAR
models in a regulatory setting
Mohammad Adibuzzaman Smart
physiological monitors (with Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed)
Samson Kiware Control of malaria in Tanzania (with George
Corliss)
Casey O’Brien The cleanability of
reusable medical devices
Special Interest
- The Marquette University Home Page
- The Department MSCS at Marquette University
- Computational Sciences Doctoral Program in MSCS
- The Biomathematics Program at Marquette University.
- Matlab Files for Balamurugan Pandiyan’s Dissertation
- Actuarial Science Program at MU
- The Society for Mathematical Biology
- Excel spreadsheets for sequence analysis: simple homology hydrophobicity sequence evolution
- Sheepish : Traditional Sources of Wellness and Healing
- Dr. Edward Tick speaks on "War and The Soul"
- (September 4, 2006) Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Feature Article
- Description of Marquette Electronic Outreach (M.E.O), a distance learning project
Phone: (414)-288-5237
Fax: (414)-288-5472
E-Mail: stevem@mscs.mu.edu