Ben’s paper, Stabilization approaches for the hyperelastic immersed boundary method for problems of large-deformation incompressible elasticity, is now available on the arXiv. We propose a simple stabilization that resembles approaches from nearly incompressible solid mechanics to improve the volume conservation of the immersed boundary method, as demonstrated by its performance in widely used benchmark problems of incompressible hyperelasticity adapted from the solid mechanics literature.

Congratulations to Simone Rossi for being awarded a 2019 American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship!

We are trilled to announce that we just received notification of a new $160K research award on developing models of IVC filters through the NSF/FDA Scholar-in-Residence at the FDA program. This project is in collaboration with Brent Craven in the Division of Applied Mechanics in the Center for Devices and Radiological Health at the FDA.

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.