Dr. Vinod Suresh

Dr. Vinod Suresh trained as a chemical engineer at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (now Chennai) and Stanford University. Following postdoctoral work at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and the University of California, Irvine, he joined the University of Auckland in 2007 where he now holds the position of Senior Lecturer. His interests encompass the study of transport processes – movement of mass and energy – in living systems from the cellular to the whole organism level using a combination of mathematical and computational modelling, biomedical imaging and cell biological experimentation.

Area of Expertise
Current projects relevant to the Riddet Institute are the development of validated mathematical models of the enterocyte (small intestinal epithelial cell) to describe the digestion and absorption of nutrients and computational models of intestinal flow and mixing. These models use realistic intestinal anatomy, contraction patterns and detailed (at the ion channel level) cellular level modelling to enable prediction of realistic nutrient concentrations in blood under varying conditions in the intestinal lumen. These projects also involve the use of engineering measurement techniques to determine the flow and transport properties (rheometry) of digesta, computational modelling of enzyme kinetics and biomedical imaging of anatomy.