Scholars@Duke
Maria-Veronica Ciocanel

Maria-Veronica Ciocanel

Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Mathematics
veronica.ciocanel@duke.edu
120 Science Drive Physics 117, Box 90320, Durham, NC 27708-0320
120 Science Drive Physics 117, Box 90320, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications

Characterizing symmetry transitions in systems with dynamic morphology.

Journal Article Mathematical biosciences · June 2025 The accurate quantification of symmetry is a key goal in biological inquiries because symmetry can affect biological performance and can reveal insights into development and evolutionary history. Recently, we proposed a versatile measure of symmetry, trans ... Full text Cite

Minimal Mechanisms of Microtubule Length Regulation in Living Cells.

Journal Article Bulletin of mathematical biology · April 2024 The microtubule cytoskeleton is responsible for sustained, long-range intracellular transport of mRNAs, proteins, and organelles in neurons. Neuronal microtubules must be stable enough to ensure reliable transport, but they also undergo dynamic instability ... Full text Cite

Parameter Identifiability in PDE Models of Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching.

Journal Article Bulletin of mathematical biology · March 2024 Identifying unique parameters for mathematical models describing biological data can be challenging and often impossible. Parameter identifiability for partial differential equations models in cell biology is especially difficult given that many establishe ... Full text Cite

Federal criminal sentencing: race-based disparate impact and differential treatment in judicial districts

Journal Article Humanities and Social Sciences Communications · December 1, 2023 Race-based inequity in federal criminal sentencing is widely acknowledged, and yet our understanding of it is far from complete. Inequity may arise from several sources, including direct bias of courtroom actors and structural bias that produces racially d ... Full text Cite

How do classroom-turnover times depend on lecture-hall size?

Journal Article Mathematical biosciences and engineering : MBE · March 2023 Academic spaces in colleges and universities span classrooms for 10 students to lecture halls that hold over 600 people. During the break between consecutive classes, students from the first class must leave and the new class must find their desks, regardl ... Full text Cite

Racial Disparities in Criminal Sentencing Vary Considerably across Federal Judges

Journal Article Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics · January 31, 2023 Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Characterizing emerging features in cell dynamics using topological data analysis methods.

Journal Article Mathematical biosciences and engineering : MBE · January 2023 Filament-motor interactions inside cells play essential roles in many developmental as well as other biological processes. For instance, actin-myosin interactions drive the emergence or closure of ring channel structures during wound healing or dorsal clos ... Full text Cite

Applications of PDEs and Stochastic Modeling to Protein Transport in Cell Biology

Journal Article Notices of the American Mathematical Society · December 1, 2022 Intracellular transport processes are essential to the healthy development of many organisms as well as more generally to healthy cellular function. The complex dynamics and interactions between protein molecules and filaments on different time and spatial ... Full text Link to item Cite

Online and In-Person Interviewing for Tenure-Track Positions

Other Notices of the American Mathematical Society · August 1, 2022 Early Career Collection ... Full text Link to item Cite

Simulated actin reorganization mediated by motor proteins.

Journal Article PLoS computational biology · April 2022 Cortical actin networks are highly dynamic and play critical roles in shaping the mechanical properties of cells. The actin cytoskeleton undergoes significant reorganization in many different contexts, including during directed cell migration and over the ... Full text Cite

Actin reorganization throughout the cell cycle mediated by motor proteins

Journal Article · July 30, 2021 Cortical actin networks are highly dynamic and play critical roles in shaping the mechanical properties of cells. The actin cytoskeleton undergoes significant reorganization over the course of the cell cycle, when cortical actin transitions between open pa ... Link to item Cite

Data and scripts from: Actin reorganization throughout the cell cycle mediated by motor proteins

Dataset · July 14, 2021 Cortical actin networks are highly dynamic and play critical roles in shaping the mechanical properties of cells. The actin cytoskeleton undergoes significant reorganization over the course of the cell cycle, when cortical actin transitions between open pa ... Full text Cite

Topological Data Analysis Approaches to Uncovering the Timing of Ring Structure Onset in Filamentous Networks

Journal Article Bulletin of Mathematical Biology · March 2021 AbstractIn developmental biology as well as in other biological systems, emerging structure and organization can be captured using time-series data of protein locations. In analyzing this time-dependent data, it is a common ... Full text Cite

Influenza spread on context-specific networks lifted from interaction-based diary data.

Journal Article Royal Society open science · January 2021 Featured Publication Studying the spread of infections is an important tool in limiting or preventing future outbreaks. A first step in understanding disease dynamics is constructing networks that reproduce features of real-world interactions. In this paper, we generate networ ... Full text Cite

Identification of approximate symmetries in biological development

Journal Article Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences · January 1, 2021 Virtually all forms of life, from single-cell eukaryotes to complex, highly differentiated multicellular organisms, exhibit a property referred to as symmetry. However, precise measures of symmetry are often difficult to formulate and apply in a meaningful ... Full text Cite

JUSTFAIR: Judicial System Transparency through Federal Archive Inferred Records.

Journal Article PloS one · October 26, 2020 In the United States, the public has a constitutional right to access criminal trial proceedings. In practice, it can be difficult or impossible for the public to exercise this right. We present JUSTFAIR: Judicial System Transparency through Federal Archiv ... Full text Cite

Renewal Reward Perspective on Linear Switching Diffusion Systems in Models of Intracellular Transport.

Journal Article Bulletin of mathematical biology · September 2020 In many biological systems, the movement of individual agents is characterized having multiple qualitatively distinct behaviors that arise from a variety of biophysical states. For example, in cells the movement of vesicles, organelles, and other intracell ... Full text Cite

A mechanism for neurofilament transport acceleration through nodes of Ranvier.

Journal Article Molecular biology of the cell · March 2020 Neurofilaments are abundant space-filling cytoskeletal polymers in axons that are transported along microtubule tracks. Neurofilament transport is accelerated at nodes of Ranvier, where axons are locally constricted. Strikingly, these constrictions are acc ... Full text Cite

Institute for the Quantitative Study of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (QSIDE)

Other Notices of the American Mathematical Society · February 2020 Full text Link to item Cite

A Mechanism for Neurofilament Transport Acceleration through Nodes of Ranvier

Journal Article Molecular Biology of the Cell · January 27, 2020 AbstractNeurofilaments are abundant space-filling cytoskeletal polymers in axons that are transported along microtubule tracks. Neurofilament transport is accelerated at nodes of Ranvier, where axons ... Full text Cite

Model reconstruction from temporal data for coupled oscillator networks.

Journal Article Chaos (Woodbury, N.Y.) · October 2019 In a complex system, the interactions between individual agents often lead to emergent collective behavior such as spontaneous synchronization, swarming, and pattern formation. Beyond the intrinsic properties of the agents, the topology of the network of i ... Full text Cite

Cardiovascular regulation in response to multiple hemorrhages: analysis and parameter estimation.

Journal Article Biological cybernetics · April 2019 Mathematical models can provide useful insights explaining behavior observed in experimental data; however, rigorous analysis is needed to select a subset of model parameters that can be informed by available data. Here we present a method to estimate an i ... Full text Cite

A multicellular vascular model of the renal myogenic response

Journal Article Processes · July 1, 2018 The myogenic response is a key autoregulatory mechanism in the mammalian kidney. Triggered by blood pressure perturbations, it is well established that the myogenic response is initiated in the renal afferent arteriole and mediated by alterations in muscle ... Full text Cite

Modeling Microtubule-Based Transport and Anchoring of mRNA

Journal Article SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems · January 1, 2018 Localization of messenger RNA (mRNA) at the vegetal cortex plays an important role in the early development of Xenopus laevis oocytes. While it is known that molecular motors are responsible for the transport of mRNA cargo along microtubules to the cortex, ... Full text Cite

Modeling Autoregulation of the Afferent Arteriole of the Rat Kidney

Journal Article Association for Women in Mathematics Series · August 31, 2017 One of the key autoregulatory mechanisms that control blood flow in the kidney is the myogenic response. Subject to increased pressure, the renal afferent arteriole responds with an increase in muscle tone and a decrease in diameter. To investigate the myo ... Full text Link to item Cite

Analysis of Active Transport by Fluorescence Recovery after Photobleaching.

Journal Article Biophysical journal · April 2017 Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) is a well-established experimental technique to study binding and diffusion of molecules in cells. Although a large number of analytical and numerical models have been developed to extract binding and diffu ... Full text Cite