Priyata Gurung, a third year undergraduate on the MMath programme, has been awarded an EPSRC Vacation Bursary to work with Anne Skeldon and Dr Nayantara Santhi (Surrey Sleep Research Centre).  The project title is “Modelling the impact of light on the body clock“. In the 1960’s it was discovered that the human body has an endogenous rhythm (the ‘body clock’ or circadian rhythm) that is typically a little longer than 24 hours. This endogenous rhythm is entrained to 24 hours by the interaction of the body with  environmental cues, the strongest of which is the light-dark cycle. The aim of this project is to analyse a mathematical model of the interaction of light with the circadian clock and to perform an initial comparison between results from the model and data collected at the Surrey Sleep Research Centre.