Simone Rossi’s paper on modeling electrical impulse propagation in the atria has been accepted for publication! The citation is:

S. Rossi, S. Gaeta, B.E. Griffith, and C.S. Henriquez. Muscle Thickness and Curvature Influence Atrial Conduction Velocities. Frontiers in Physiology. Accepted for publication

Congratulations, Simone!

In July, we welcomed two new postdoctoral researchers to the group: Saad Qadeer, who just finished his PhD in Applied Mathematics at UC-Berkeley, and David Wells, who is joining us from an RTG Postdoctoral Fellowship at RPI. Welcome to UNC!

We also said goodbye to Charles Puelz, who is starting a position as a Courant Instructor at NYU in the Fall, and to Michael Chambers, who is resuming his MD program at UNC. Good luck, Charles and Mike!

We are trilled to announce that we just received notification of a new $2.8M research award on developing multiscale models of blood clotting in atrial fibrillation through the NIH-led multiagency Predictive Multiscale Models for Biomedical, Biological, Behavioral, Environmental and Clinical Research program. The project team includes investigators at Duke University (PI: Craig Henriquez) and the University of Utah (PI: Aaron Fogelson).

Congratulations to Elijah DeLee and Raveena Kshatriya, who both graduated in May. Elijah received his BS in Applied Mathematics with Highest Honors and Highest Distinction, and Raveena received her BA with a double major in Computer Science and Mathematics. Elijah will be working at RedHat in Raleigh, and Raveena is off to AIG in Charlotte. Good luck!

Simone Rossi gave the April 24 NYU biomathematics/computational biology colloquium on his work on modeling cardiac dynamics. The title of his talk is Computational Modeling of Cardiac Electromechanics.

Charles Puelz gave the April 10 NC State biomathematics seminar on his PhD thesis work. The title of his talk was Computational modeling of Fontan hemodynamics.

Elijah DeLee defended his undergraduate honors thesis, Assessing the Scalability of Parallel Programs: Case studies from IBAMR, on Friday, April 6. Elijah will be graduating with honors in May. Congratulations, Elijah!

Several group members will be presenting their research at this weekend’s SIAM SEAS conference at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Ben Vadala-Roth is speaking on IB models of incompressible elasticity in MS 22: Biological Fluid-Structure Interaction Systems at Low to Intermediate Reynolds Numbers at noon on Saturday.

Mike Lee is speaking on FSI models of bioprosthetic heart valves in MS 23: Innovations in Biomechanical Modeling of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Physiology at 11:40 on Saturday.

Charlie Talbot is speaking about his work on developing peridynamic models of soft biological materials in MS 26: Advances in Applied Mathematics.

In addition, Aaron Barrett is presenting a poster on his work on numerical methods for FSI in complex (polymeric) fluids, and Charles Puelz and Margaret Anne Smith are presenting a poster on their work on developing a new FSI heart model.

Congratulations to Aaron Barrett, who successfully completed his oral qualifying exam on numerical methods for fluid-structure interaction in complex (viscoelastic) fluid environments!