A friend of mine (working in a University) is developing a model in Simulink. I (not affiliated with said University) would like to play around and experiment with the model programmatically. i.e. running experiments, different input permutations ... etc.
Is it possible for my friend to export the simulink model and send it to me, so that I can work on it without having either Matlab or Simulink installed on my computer?
There isn't an easy solution. Your friend can use Simulink Coder to generate C code from the Simulink model, or even an executable, and then you can run that C code or executable.
With a bit more work, he can create a MATLAB GUI as a user interface to the generated C code or the executable (not the model), and then package the whole thing (GUI + generated C code) with MATLAB Compiler. It's more user-friendly for the end-user (i.e. you) but it's by no means not easy to do.
See Deployment of Simulink Models and How do I deploy a Simulink model over the web using MATLAB Compiler 4.5 (R2006b)? for similar/related questions.