Student will highlight the use of biomechanical computational models in combination with clinical and in-vitro data to study the relationship between the mechanical loading of the heart and the progression of cardiac diseases.
Javiera Jilberto Vallejos, a Ph.D. candidate in the lab of David Nordsletten, Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering and Cardiac Surgery, will be presenting at the 5th Rising Stars in Computational and Data Sciences Workshop in Austin, Texas, from April 30 to May 1.
Rising Stars is an intensive workshop for graduate students and postdocs who are interested in pursuing academic and research careers. A primary focus of the workshop is increasing the participation of underrepresented gender identities in computational and data sciences.
“I will be talking about the use of biomechanical computational models in combination with clinical and in-vitro data to study the relationship between the mechanical loading of the heart and the progression of cardiac diseases,” said Jilberto Vallejos. “In collaboration with Dr. Adam Helms, we have been using magnetic resonance images to generate patient-specific models of individuals with a condition called Desmoplakin Cardiomyopathy. This disease is caused by a genetic mutation of the gene encoding the protein desmoplakin, a key component of the mechanical linkage between cardiac cells. At the same time, in collaboration with the Baker Lab, we are using data from engineered heart tissues with this genetic condition to generate a tissue-scale model of this disease that allows us to correlate injury and mechanical loads. In summary, I want to show how we can use clinical and in-vitro data to generate mechanical models at different length scales to help us identify the key responsible for disease progression. Since this workshop is tailored towards a more computational scientist audience, I will focus on the computational and modeling tools we have developed to generate the simulations from the available data.”