There are many open questions concerning the functioning of the human uterus. One of these open questions concerns exactly how the uterus operates as an organ to perform the very organized act of contracting in a synchronized fashion to expulse a new human in to this world. If we don’t understand how it works when it is working normally it is obvious that we will not be as capable of intervening or preventing when, sometimes with tragic consequences, it does not do its job properly and a child is born before it is ready.The aim of our research is twofold: we want to be able to understand what the electrical activity of the uterus can tell us about the risk of premature birth and we simply want to understand better how the uterus works.
This idea of using the externally detected electrical activity of the uterus (electrohysterogram or EHG) to predict preterm labor is not new and lot of work has already been put in to it. The novel approach in this work is not to use the signal from one or two isolated places on the abdomen of the expectant mother but to map the propagation of the signals and to investigate the auto organization of the contractions and to use a matrix of electrodes to give us a much more complete picture the organisation and operation of the uterus as pregnancy reaches its conclusion. 
More recently the efforts of the team and its international collaborators have turned towards the developement and application of patient specific multiscale systems biology models. These models can be used to identify the underlying causes of the form and propagation of  the signals observed on the subjects abdomen.