Heinz Schättler - Böcker

This book gives a comprehensive treatment of the fundamental necessary and sufficient conditions for optimality for finite-dimensional, deterministic, optimal control problems.

Mathematical biomedicine is a rapidly developing interdisciplinary field of research that connects the natural and exact sciences in an attempt to respond to the modeling and simulation challenges raised by biology and medicine. There exist a large number of mathematical methods and procedures that can be brought in to meet these challenges and this book presents a palette of such tools ranging from discrete cellular automata to cell population based models described by ordinary differential equations to nonlinear partial differential equations representing complex time- and space-dependent continuous processes. Both stochastic and deterministic methods are employed to analyze biological phenomena in various temporal and spatial settings. This book illustrates the breadth and depth of research opportunities that exist in the general field of mathematical biomedicine by highlighting some of the fascinating interactions that continue to develop between the mathematical and biomedical sciences. It consists of five parts that can be read independently, but are arranged to give the reader a broader picture of specific research topics and the mathematical tools that are being applied in its modeling and analysis. The main areas covered include immune system modeling, blood vessel dynamics, cancer modeling and treatment, and epidemiology. The chapters address topics that are at the forefront of current biomedical research such as cancer stem cells, immunodominance and viral epitopes, aggressive forms of brain cancer, or gene therapy. The presentations highlight how mathematical modeling can enhance biomedical understanding and will be of interest to both the mathematical and the biomedical communities including researchers already working in the field as well as those who might consider entering it. Much of the material is presented in a way that gives graduate students and young researchers a starting point for their own work.

This book gives a comprehensive treatment of the fundamental necessary and sufficient conditions for optimality for finite-dimensional, deterministic, optimal control problems. The emphasis is on the geometric aspects of the theory and on illustrating how these methods can be used to solve optimal control problems. It provides tools and techniques that go well beyond standard procedures and can be used to obtain a full understanding of the global structure of solutions for the underlying problem. The text includes a large number and variety of fully worked out examples that range from the classical problem of minimum surfaces of revolution to cancer treatment for novel therapy approaches. All these examples, in one way or the other, illustrate the power of geometric techniques and methods. The versatile text contains material on different levels ranging from the introductory and elementary to the advanced. Parts of the text can be viewed as a comprehensive textbook for both advanced undergraduate and all level graduate courses on optimal control in both mathematics and engineering departments. The text moves smoothly from the more introductory topics to those parts that are in a monograph style were advanced topics are presented. While the presentation is mathematically rigorous, it is carried out in a tutorial style that makes the text accessible to a wide audience of researchers and students from various fields, including the mathematical sciences and engineering.Heinz Schättler is an Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, Urszula Ledzewicz is a Distinguished Research Professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

This book presents applications of geometric optimal control to real life biomedical problems with an emphasis on cancer treatments.