Speaker: Amanda Peters Randles, Ph.D. candidate in Applied Physics at Harvard University

Title:

Modeling Cardiovascular Flow Dynamics

Abstract:

Accurate and reliable modeling of cardiovascular hemodynamics has the potential to improve understanding of the localization and progression of heart diseases. However, building a detailed, realistic model of human blood flow is a formidable mathematical and computational challenge. The simulation must combine the motion of the fluid, the intricate geometry of the blood vessels, continual changes in flow and pressure driven by the heartbeat, and the behavior of suspended bodies such as red blood cells. Such simulations can provide insight into factors like endothelial shear stress that act as triggers for the complex biomechanical events that can lead to atherosclerotic pathologies. Currently, it

is not possible to measure endothelial shear stress in vivo, making these simulations a crucial component to understanding and potentially predicting the progression of cardiovascular disease. In this talk, I will present and examine our approach for enabling an efficient parallel model of the fluid  on both the IBM Blue Gene/P and Blue Gene/Q architectures and discuss the use of parallel-in-time decomposition to extend the number of time steps that can be modeled in a given wall-clock time.

Bio:

Amanda Peters Randles is a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Physics at Harvard University under the supervision of Efthimios Kaxiras and Hanspeter Pfister. She is interested in the design of large-scale parallel applications targeting problems in physics.  Her thesis research is focused on the development and deployment of a general purpose, multiscale methodology to study blood flow patterns in complex environments relating to real patient arterial geometries.  She received her Bachelor's Degree in both Computer Science and Physics from Duke University, and her Master's Degree in Computer Science from Harvard University.  Prior to graduate school, she worked for three years as a software developer at IBM on the Blue Gene Development Team. For more information please visit: people.seas.harvard.edu/~apeters