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Reseach interests
My research interests lie within the general area of computational cardiac electrophysiology. I am interested in understanding mechanisms of initiation, maintenance, and termination of cardiac arrhythmias. Cardiac arrhythmias are a major cause of death in the industrialized world, claiming several hundred thousands of lives each year in the US alone.
The problems I find most exciting are interdisciplinary by nature, encompassing traditional electrophysiology, non-linear dynamics, and physics. My research typically involves computer simulation of electrical activity in cardiac cells or cardiac tissue. While I often find it useful to work with highly complex and very detailed mathematical models of such activity, I also find considerable value in analyzing more simple models.
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Atrial fibrillation
Currently, I am working on modeling a commonly occuring type of arrhythmia called atrial fibrillation. Using a detailed anatomical model of the human atria (the upper chambers of the heart) allows us to investigate the dynamics of this arrhythmia in a realistic geometry. |
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Excitation waves propagating
in an anatomical model of the human atria |
Arrhythmia termination and prevention
In addition to understanding the mechanisms of arrhythmias, another theme of my research is development of new strategies for arrhythmia termination. I am also working on methods for preventing some arrhythmias from occuring in the first place by controlling a precursor event called repolarization alternans.
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| Termination of reentrant activity in a mathematical model by application of five premature stimuli. |
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Alternans control using a delayed feedback algorithm, starting during beat number four. |
Stochastic aspects of cardiac arrhythmias
I am very interested in stochastic aspects of cardiac arrhythmias. The electrical activity of cardiac cells is generated by the diffusion of ions through specialized channels which open and close in what appears to be a stochastic manner. My PhD thesis work focused on the effects of such stochastic activity on the regularity of spontaneous beating and on phase resetting.
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Ten superimposed runs of a stochastic cardiac cell model. |
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