VPH Honorary Lecture - Alfons Hoekstra (University of Amsterdam), Chair -Jérôme Noailly (UPF)

Описание: Multiscale modelling and high performance multiscale computing in biomedicine

Abstract: Alfons Hoekstra’s research focuses on modelling and simulating complex systems, with an emphasis on multiscale models of human physiology and pathology. He helped to create the‘Virtual Physiological Human’ and contributed to the ‘Virtual Artery’, a multiscale model of the cardiovascular system. The latter includes both low-dimensional models of systemic blood flow and highly detailed models in which all individual red and white blood cells and platelets are modelled in plasma suspension. Alfons additionally develops models of the arterial wall which explicitly include the behaviour of specific cells, such as smooth muscle cells. He then applies these models to cases such as thrombosis, intracranial aneurysms and arterial tissue reactions to stenting. He further develops methods and techniques for simulating these complex multiscale models on the most powerful supercomputers. He has worked in close collaboration with international computing centres to create the ‘Multiscale Modelling and Simulation Framework’. Current research work also focuses on models for human physiology and pathology in the elderly, as well as models which explicitly take into account the impact of socio-economic environmental factors and psychological factors on health and disease. A key question is how such multiscale models can be efficiently simulated on the most powerful supercomputers in the world, and how this computing power can be used to calculate the impact of uncertainties in these multiscale models and the model parameters on the final result of the simulation. Such concept of multiscale ‘uncertainty quantification’ is still in its infancy and will be an important topic of research in the years ahead.

Biosketch: Alfons Hoekstra is full professor Computational Science & Engineering and director of Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam. He is also a member of the Computational Science Lab. He is project director of several large European projects. He was involved in the film ‘Virtual Humans’, which shows the possibilities of using high-performance computing (HPC) to delve deeper into the processes that take place in the human body. Virtual Humans was produced as part of the CompBioMed project. Hoekstra is editor of the Journal of Computational Science.