Qi’s paper is accepted at J Comput Phys
Qi Sun’s paper entitled, Improving the Robustness of the Immersed Interface Method through Regularized Velocity Reconstruction, which is co-authored by Amin Kolahdouz, has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Computational Physics.
This paper introduces a stabilization strategy for the immersed interface method that eliminates a restrictive mesh factor ratio requirement by using a Tikhonov-regularized velocity interpolation operator. The new formulation preserves accuracy while allowing the structure mesh to be much finer than the fluid grid, enabling stable and efficient simulations of complex fluid–structure interaction problems that were previously computationally prohibitive.
Congratulations, Qi!
Cole’s paper is accepted at J Comput Phys
Cole Gruninger’s paper entitled, Composite B-Spline Regularized Delta Functions for the Immersed Boundary Method: Divergence-Free Interpolation and Gradient-Preserving Force Spreading, has been accepted to appear in Journal of Computational Physics.
This paper introduces an immersed boundary method for fluid–structure interaction that employs composite B-spline regularized delta functions, which have been used previously to achieve pointwise divergence-free velocity reconstructions in computational fluid dynamics applications but not within immersed boundary formulations. The work is the first to demonstrate that these kernels preserve discrete gradient structure when spreading forces from a thin boundary to the background grid. This key conceptual advance explains their excellent volume conservation and shows that they achieve accuracy comparable to the nonlocal divergence-free immersed boundary (DFIB) method of Bao et al. while maintaining the locality and efficiency of the classical immersed boundary approach.
Congratulations, Cole!
Langtangen Prize
Our 2024 PNAS Nexus paper, Simulating cardiac fluid dynamics in the human heart, has been selected as one of two inaugural recipients of the Langtangen Prize.
The prize citation for this work is:
for the development of mathematical models of the heart that reproduce complex physiological phenomena.
The full citation for the winning paper is:
M. Davey, C. Puelz, S. Rossi, M. A. Smith, D. R. Wells, G. Sturgeon, W. P. Segars, J. P. Vavalle, C. S. Peskin, and B. E. Griffith. Simulating cardiac fluid dynamics in the human heart. PNAS Nexus, 3(10):pgae392 (16 pages), 2024.
Congratulations to Marshall, Charles, and the rest of the co-authors!
Nick Cantrell selected to UNC’s IVB program
Nick Cantrell has been selected as a trainee in UNC’s NIH-funded Integrative Vascular Biology training program.
Congratulations, Nick!
Congratulations to Dr. Cole Gruninger!
Congratulations to Cole Gruninger for successfully completing his PhD in Summer 2025.
Cole’s thesis is entitled, Advances in the Immersed Boundary Method: Viscoelastic Flows, Orthogonality-Preserving Regularization, and Robust Implicit Solvers.
Good luck, Cole!
New NIH award on cardiac modeling software infrastructure
We are thrilled to announce that we have been awarded a two-year R03 grant through the NIH’s Building Sustainable Software Tools for Open Science program to advance Cardinal, a new open-source software platform for simulating all major aspects of heart function. Cardinal will give researchers a powerful, physics-based framework for integrating clinical and experimental data to better understand disease mechanisms, test interventions, and develop personalized treatment strategies. This project will optimize Cardinal’s computational performance, improve portability across computing environments, and expand community resources—enabling more accurate, scalable, and accessible cardiac digital twin models for research and clinical translation.
Michael (Li)’s paper is accepted at PLoS Comput Biol
Lianxia (Michael) Li’s paper, with colleagues from the UNC Kidney Center and the Biomedical Research Imaging Center entitled, Temporal evolution of hemodynamics in murine arteriovenous fistula: A micro-CT based CFD study, has been accepted to appear in PLOS Computational Biology.
Congratulations, Michael!
Aaron’s paper is accepted at Comput Fluids
The paper by group alumnus Aaron Barrett, Adaptive mesh refinement for two-phase viscoelastic fluid mixture models, has been accepted for publication in Computers & Fluids. This study was also done in collaboration with Bindi Nagda and Jian Du at Florida Institute of Technology and Aaron Fogelson at the University of Utah.
Congratulations, Aaron!
Michael (Facci) and Amin’s paper is accepted at J Comput Phys
Michael (Facci) and group alumnus Amin Kolahdouz’s paper, An immersed interface method for incompressible flows and geometries with sharp features, has been accepted to appear in Journal of Computational Physics.
Congratuations, Michael and Amin!
Congratulations to Dr. Laryssa Abdala!
Congratulations to Laryssa Abdala for successfully completing her PhD in Spring 2025.
Laryssa’s thesis is entitled, Electro-Fluid-Mechanical Computational Models of the Human Heart.
Good luck, Laryssa!