Dr Niederer, from Imperial College, London, is Chair in Biomedical Engineering at the National Heart and Lung Institute and visited UNSW as guest of CVMM International Speaker Fellowship recipient, Professor Dianne Fatkin.
On Friday 13 September, the Cardiac, Vascular & Metabolic Medicine Theme presented the third event in its series of faculty-wide lectures by renowned international speakers. Speaking as part of the Cardiovascular Research Showcase at the St Vincent’s Sydney Health Innovation Precinct Research Week 2024, Dr Niederer presented a lecture on “The Digital Heart: Using Mathematics to Model the Heart from Cell to Clinic”.
Dr Niederer, from Imperial College, London, is Chair in Biomedical Engineering at the National Heart and Lung Institute and visited UNSW as guest of CVMM International Speaker Fellowship recipient, Professor Dianne Fatkin.
Dr Niederer is currently working with Professor Fatkin on alcohol induced cardiomyopathy. Across the many discussions throughout the visit, they identified potential new projects around multi-modal cardiac imaging, looking at how they could use large language models to accelerate the creation of biophysical models, and how to use simulations to explore arrhythmia therapies in amyloid cases.
“It was a great visit, and I was fortunate that researchers from the Victor Chang, UNSW Data Science Hub, Centre for Big Data Research in Health, were able to discuss cardiac digital twins, and their projects and look for opportunities to explore new projects. Learning more about the research across UNSW was both interesting and inspiring and I hope to look for more opportunities to work together going forward,” Dr Neiderer said.
Prof Fatkin has been collaborating with Dr Neiderer for several years, and valued the opportunity to meet in person, and have extended face-to-face conversations.
“Lively discussions over coffee or lunch stimulated new ideas and research directions that will enrich our current projects and lead to new ones,” Prof Fatkin said.
During his visit, Steve was able to meet with other VCCRI-based and St Vincent's-based clinicians and researchers and several new collaborations were initiated.
“Steve gave several talks in the St Vincent's Health Innovation Precinct and UNSW campus, including the VCCRI's prestigious Barbara Ell Lecture as part of Research Week, St Vincent's Hospital Cardiology Grand Rounds, UNSW Centre for Big Data Research in Health, and the UNSW Data Science Hub. His audiences included clinicians, nursing staff, allied health staff, big data and basic science researchers, medical and science students. His research using in silico models to generate patient-specific digital twins was something completely novel with one young researcher remarking, "wow, this is the future!".
His visit has been educational, inspirational and motivating for the CVMM community,” Prof Fatkin added.
The CVMM International Fellowship is a fantastic initiative to bring cutting-edge researchers to the UNSW campus and presents an exciting opportunity for UNSW students and researchers to hear cutting-edge insights and experiences from an international expert.