
It was math that led her to the heart, and it was Union that led her to math.
Colleen Clancy '94, a postdoctoral research scientist in Columbia University's Pharmacology Department, is now working on mathematical modeling of defects in the human heart-specifically, structure-function relationships in cardiac ion channels.
Clancy completed her Ph.D. in physiology at Case Western Reserve University last year (for research linking a genetic defect to a particular kind of arrhythmia), and later was profiled in an issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education as a “rising star, a Ph.D. to watch.” The newspaper cited her research, her independent thinking (she was principal author of a paper published in Nature-a rarity for someone who hadn't yet finished the Ph.D.), and her community service.
A few short years ago, as a Union undergraduate, Clancy majored in math and biology, and in her senior year she did an independent project with Professor Michael Frame.
“After graduating, we continued to work together and expanded our research to think about time series data (which could be anything that varies in time, like the stock market or rainforest temperatures, etc.),” she says. “We decided to focus on abnormal cardiac rhythms by exploring electrocardiogram (ECG) data as time series.
“We wanted to use these nonlinear time series to drive an iterated function system that generates geometrical data sets that may (or may not) contain obvious patterns,” she continues. “In this way, we could try to understand if there was an underlying determinism to the system, or if it was indeed random, as it appeared to be. The goal would then ultimately be to provide input to the system and try to control the behavior, say by pushing an abnormal rhythm into a normal rhythm.”
This investigation led Clancy to papers by Matthew Levy and Yoram Rudy, both established investigators at Case Western. She joined Rudy's laboratory for her Ph.D. studies, which focused on developing mathematical models of cardiac cells in order to understand the genesis of arrhythmias. She won an award for the best in cardiovascular research at the university's Research Day 1999.
What got her interested in math in the first place? “My interest definitely got its start at Union. Alan Taylor was my first calculus professor, and although I wasn't the ideal pupil in terms of homework, I remember thinking… hmm…I sort of get this…it isn't so bad….”
Then she took other calculus classes with Shelton Perera and Michael Frame-“the best teachers I've ever had. I really got excited about Michael's fractals class and Alan Taylor's topics in mathematical political science.”
It was during the independent study that she began getting deeply interested in the subject. “It was a way of learning completely removed from the classroom, much more abstract. Stuff just kind of bounced around in the brain and answers fell out, seemingly from nowhere. It was also a more focused way to learn, where creativity meets all the stuff you learned (or tried to learn) in the classroom. To work on a problem that is personally interesting puts knowledge in perspective. Things start to make sense in a new way. All of a sudden, concepts that had seemed difficult developed clarity.
I also realized during that time that I would like to follow a path that would allow me to continually explore and think in this way. ”
Clancy doesn't limit herself to
lab and computer, however,
being committed to serving the community as well. At Case in 1998, she founded and directed a tutoring program for science and math students at Superior Elementary in East Cleveland.
She recruited and organized more than forty tutors to improve performance on the Ohio State Proficiency Exam, and she won the Physiology Department's award for distinguished service to the community.
“One of the ironies that is lost on many is that large research universities are often situated in urban settings that suffer tremendously in terms of secondary education for local residents,” she says. “The potential for outreach in these communities is vast, and I think we could do a lot more as researchers to incorporate students from local schools into internship programs and science and math tutoring. This will be a major priority for me here, to get people involved and give back to the surrounding community.”
Clancy hopes to stay in academics
and ultimately to develop her own laboratory. “The brain as the final frontier of science naturally lends itself to mathematical cellular models. I think this approach could be very useful in understanding the mechanisms of neurological disorders such as epilepsy and other seizure-related illnesses.”