Heart disease is the number one killer in the industrialized world, due in large part to heart rhythm dysfunction and the development of arrhythmias. Yet, the treatment for a common arrhythmia – the fast rhythm which accompanies a myocardial infarction or heart attack – currently has a success rate of only 50-70%. The odds could be improved if treatment were tailored specifically to the configuration of the patient’s own heart, through the creation of a personal virtual heart.

Join SEAS on April 23, 2015, for the annual Frank Howard Distinguished Lecture when we explore biomedical advances in cardiac treatment with Natalia Trayanova, Ph.D., the inaugural Murray B. Sachs Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Trayanova and her team within Hopkins' Institute for Computational Medicine are getting to the heart of this matter, building very complex, multi‑scaled computational models that simulate electrophysiological and electromechanical heart function and test possible treatment scenarios. Dr. Trayanova hopes to be the first researcher to introduce computational modeling of the heart as part of cardiac patient care.

A reception follows the lecture.