Mark Chaplain is an applied mathematician whose main area of research is mathematical oncology – the mathematical modelling of cancer – a field which he has pioneered since the early 1990s. During his research career he has held positions at the universities of Bath, Dundee and now St Andrews where he holds the Gregory Chair of Applied Mathematics.
He has formulated and developed a number of important predictive mathematical models for the growth, spread and treatment of cancer using both systems of nonlinear partial differential equations and novel agent-based techniques. Key areas of application and investigation include gene regulatory networks, tumour-induced angiogenesis, invasion and metastatic spread, immunotherapy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
He is a former President of the Society for Mathematical Biology and became President of the London Mathematical Society in 2025. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; has been a recipient of an ERC Advanced Research Grant; has been awarded a Whitehead Prize by the London Mathematical Society; and has twice co-authored papers that have been awarded the Lee A. Segel Best Paper Prize of the Society for Mathematical Biology.
Professional position
- Gregory Chair of Applied Mathematics, School Of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews
