Dr Sean Vittadello is a Senior MACSYS Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at The University of Melbourne, within the Theoretical Systems Biology group. His academic background is in both pure and applied mathematics, specifically C*-algebras and mathematical biology, and he has published research in peer-reviewed journals in both mathematical fields. His general research interests originate from the interplay between pure mathematics, applied mathematics, and biology. In particular he is interested in mathematical systems biology, and the complexity and holism of living organisms from the perspectives of structure, function, and (self-)organisation at all biological scales.

In previous work Dr Sean Vittadello developed and analysed mathematical models, involving ordinary/partial/delay differential equations, for cell migration and proliferation based on experimental data employing fluorescent cell cycle indicators. For this, he performed all of the experimental work within a cell culture laboratory.

More recently his work involves using mathematics to generate, or provide a framework for generating, new ideas and new conceptual relations regarding complex biological systems. Examples include: a model comparison framework based on simplicial complexes and group actions; a mathematical framework for developing models of cell fate dynamics based on random dynamical systems theory; a framework for studying the organisational structure of biological systems based on directed graphs; and, an abstract modelling formalism for systems biology that generalises chemical reaction networks, stochastic Petri nets, and chemical hypergraphs, based on hypergraph theory.