Srideep Musuvathy spent 10 years furthering his education at USC. Now, Musuvathy gives us insight into how USC shaped his career.
Story by: Leah Haynesworth
Just getting one degree from USC is hard, but Srideep Musuvathy has four. Three years after receiving his four degrees, Musuvathy is now studying how mathematical models relate to the body’s healing process and the world at large in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Musuvathy spent nearly 10 years at USC and earned master’s degrees in computer science, electrical engineering and mathematics. He also received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering with a specialization in dynamical system theory and controls with applications to biological systems. Subsequently, he worked as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in USC’s Biomedical Engineering department for over a year.
Musuvathy, originally from Madurai, India, earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Madurai Kamaraj University in India. Upon graduation, he was interested in robotics and started working as a research fellow in a robotics and haptic lab in India. He decided to come to USC due to its fantastic robotics and research group, he said.
He credits USC for much of his professional success. “I have spent almost a third of my life at USC. In a way, life at USC has shaped most of my adult life,” Musuvathy said. “The degrees and the interaction with various professors and students certainly shaped the way I think and look at problems.”
Today, Musuvathy lives in Santa Fe, and builds mathematical models that show how biological systems reorganize themselves with new energy and information. These models help him understand the body’s healing process. He sees the body as a complex, interconnected system with individual parts that work together to remain healthy. However, the individual parts of this system are often hard to understand because there is only so much that scientists can measure, according to Musuvathy.
Musuvathy measures electrical activity using electrocardiograms (ECGs or EKGs) to pick up the heart’s electrical bursts or similar devices that pick up the electric activity on the surface of muscles. The question is, he said, “How can we understand what happens in these components (heart, muscles, etc.), given only the information we glean from these sensors?” Also, “If we can pick up and measure signals from different parts of the body, can we understand how these different parts communicate with each other and coherently function to result in a healthily functioning body?,” he asked.
Rather than attempt to answer these questions from a physiological standpoint, Musuvathy’s work draws on the mathematics of dynamical systems and theories behind thermodynamics. He then builds models and applies their mechanisms to other complex systems, including economics, society, business, and politics, and the challenges they confront.
“What we hope to do is to address the underlying aspect of all of these problems using mathematics and then develop generalized solutions to modify or control them,” Musuvathy said. The underlying aspect, he said, is that there are various components interacting with each other. However, noticeable patterns tend to emerge and the large system often puts itself into some sort of order. Musuvathy’s research will help show which mechanisms create order and how this can be used and controlled.
Musuvathy foresees these questions keeping him busy for the years to come. “Although the specifics might change, the research questions I ask are big enough and broad enough that the general themes will probably remain the same,” he said. Musuvathy would like to collect data on the neuromuscular system from the spine and will study how the different parts develop coherent behavior.
Leah Haynesworth, Communications Editor, is a first year student in the Master of Public Administration program and is from Montclair, New Jersey.