A new European Research Council (ERC) Science Story, How maths turned music into medicine, highlights how mathematical models can unlock the hidden structure of musical performance and music-heart interactions, opening up new applications in cardiovascular medicine. The article by Vaida Bankauskaite, MD, PhD – Life Sciences 4: Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing panel coordinator – is based on an interview with Elaine Chew.
The interview questions spanned topics ranging from Elaine’s inspiration for combining mathematics with music and with medicine to how the spiral array model changed our understanding of music to key challenges for developing mathematical models for studying music’s impact on health to major findings of the ERC COSMOS and HEART.FM projects to qualities or skills for successful involvement in multidisciplinary research to a future of prescribing “musical treatments” to prevent or reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, to how the ERC has changed Elaine’s career as a researcher.
