Projects

NIH National Program of Excellence in Biomedical Computing Planning Grant
Principal Investigators: Donald P. Gaver and Lisa J. Fauci

The CCS has been awarded a pre-NPEBC grant from the National Institutes of Health for a project titled "Biocomputing: Integrating Molecular/Organ- Level Function."

The goal is to develop Tulane University's community of biomedical researchers, applied mathematicians and computational scientists into a National Program of Excellence in Biomedical Computing (NPEBC). To do so, we are providing the essential physical and intellectual infrastructure to perform advanced computational simulations of biomedical systems, with a focus on multi-scale problems where molecular mechanisms influence large-scale physiological behavior. Center activities will develop interdisciplinary links between cohorts of faculty and research associates of diverse educational backgrounds (theoreticians, computational and experimental scientists, clinical investigators), and will create a substantial link between the educational and research missions of Tulane University. In this process, research studies will provide educational opportunities to undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral students. In return, the education of these students will provide a core group of individuals who can participate in the research activities. As a result, we will prepare ourselves to become a National Program of Excellence in Biomedical Computing. In order for our pre- NPEBC to develop into an NPEBC, we will attain the following objectives:

• Objective 1: We will initiate a research program that will link molecular to organ-level responses in biomedical systems. Our research program will consist of projects that will be performed by teams of theoreticians and computational scientists who will interact with experimentalists and clinical investigators. These projects will focus on the development of computational methods and the use of these tools to elucidate the importance of molecular events and the control of macroscale dynamic processes that are instrumental to physiologic functioning at the organ-level.
• Objective 2: We will develop a physical and intellectual infrastructure that will support and promote multidisciplinary groups of educators and researchers as they create and teach biomedical computing techniques for the investigation of multiple-scale problems in biomedical systems. Our goal is to promote and provide resources for the interdisciplinary interaction between faculty and students from different departments who have research interests in biomedical computing.
• Objective 3: We will develop educational and outreach opportunities to train the next generation of biomedical researchers.

Research Projects

Project I: Mechano-Electric Feedback in the Heart
P.I.s: Trayanova (Biomedical Engineering) and Fauci (Mathematics)

Project II: Integrative Modeling of Bone Adaptation - Incorporation of Hierarchical Time and Length Scales
P.I.s: Hart (Biomedical Engineering), Nauman (Biomedical Engineering)

Project III: Interactions Between Pulmonary Mechanical Behavior and Surfactant Molecular Dynamics
P.I.s: Gaver (Biomedical Engineering), Lacks (Chemical Engineering)

Related Research Projects

Project: Structure and Dynamics of DNA
P.I.s: Thomas Bishop (Environmental Health Sciences), Ricardo Cortez (Mathematics), Oleksandr Zhmudsky (CCS)

Project: Dynamics of Interfaces in Visoelastic Fluids
P.I.s: Donald Gaver (Biomedical Engineering), Daniel DeKee (Chemical Engineering), Ali El-Afif (CCS), Ricardo Cortez (Mathematics)

Project: Computational Neuroscience/Electrobiology
P.I.s: Natalia Trayanova (Biomedical Engineering), Jeffrey Tasker (Cell and Molecular Biology) Alexander Komendantov (CCS).

Project: Surface and Interface Processes
P.I.s: Ulrike Diebold (Physics), Daniel Lacks (Chemical Engineering), Igor Kuyanov (CCS).