February 22, 2013
Kathleen McDowell, JHU Biomedical Engineering graduate student in the School of Medicine, placed first in the student poster competition at the Gordon Research Conference (“GRC”) on Cardiac Arrhythmia Mechanisms. The conference was held in Ventura, CA in February 2013 and focused on integrating basic and translational science with clinically relevant topics.
December 5, 2012
Tom O'Hara's application for NIH-F32 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award for Individual Postdoctoral Fellows entitled "Molecular Mechanisms of Arrhythmogenesis in Human Heart Failure" received a perfect score of 10.0 in review, and will likely be funded for up to 3 years.
December 5, 2012
Dr. Fijoy Vadakkumpadan, a research faculty and member of Dr. Natalia Trayanova's team, has been awarded the American Heart Association National Scientist Development Grant. This grant supports highly promising beginning scientists in their progress toward independence by encouraging and adequately funding research projects that can bridge the gap between completion of research training and readiness for successful competition as an independent investigator. The award provides $77,000 per year for four years.
November 1, 2012
In order to reach out to physicians and medical researchers who are unfamiliar with the field of computational medicine, a review article titled,
Computational Medicine: Translating Models to Clinical Care was published in
Science Translational Medicine. Dr. Natalia Trayanova, a coauthor of the article, describes how computational models of electrical activity in the heart are on their way to being used to guide doctors in diagnosing and preventing sudden cardiac death. Details are available in the
article posted in JHU News and Information.October 31, 2012
Dr. Natalia Trayanova gives a plenary talk at Cardiac Physiome Workshop in San Diego, Oct 31-Nov 2. The focus of the meeting is to combine experimental and modelling research focused on understanding cardiac physiology across scales of biological organization from molecule to organ system.
July 26, 2012
Jason Constantino has been named a 2013 Siebel Scholar. Students are nominated for the Siebel Scholarship on the basis of academic and research excellence and leadership activity during their graduate school career and awarded to 85 graduate students from the world’s top graduate schools. The scholarship itself is $35000 to supplement the student's stipend in his/her final year or graduate school, and scholars become part of the Siebel Scholars community, which involves attending annual conferences and events.
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The Siebel Foundation has been recognizing students from the top graduate programs in Business, Computer Science and Bioengineering programs since 2000. The goal of the Siebel Scholarship program is to bring together talented students from these disciplines to work with the Foundation to find solutions to important problems faced by society."
July 5, 2012
Dr. Natalia Trayanova of the Institute for Computational Medicine is currently featured on Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Systems Biology & Medicine's list of the top ten Articles. The list is a collection of the top cited publications published by the journal.
June 4, 2012
Kathleen McDowell, a PhD student in the lab of Dr. Natalia Trayanova, has been awarded an American Heart Association Predoctoral Fellowship, which provides funding for 2 years of research.
May 1, 2012
Natalia A. Trayanova, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and the Institute for Computational Medicine, recently presented the keynote lecture at the 3rd International Conference on Engineering Frontiers in Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease. The conference was held at the Stanford University Cardiovascular Institute in Stanford, CA.
April 25, 2012
Kathleen McDowell, a PhD student in the Dr. Natalia Trayanova's lab, was the winner of the Jos Willems Young Investigator Competition at the 2012 International Society for Computerized Electrocardiology (ISCE) meeting, in Birmingham, Alabama. Kathleen presented her recenty study, "Investigating the Arrhythmogenic Effects of Atrial Fibrosis in Patient-Specific Models". The study uses a novel computational model of the human left atrium, constructed from MRI scans of an atrial fibrillation patient. The model incorporates realistic structural and electrophysiological heterogeneity, including accurate fibrotic lesion geometry obtained from late gadolinium enhancement MRI. This model was used to investigate the mechanisms which underlie the breakup of pulmonary vein ectopic waves in the fibrotic atrium.
2011
Brent Millare, a second-year BME PhD student in Dr. Natalia Trayanova's lab, has been awarded National Research Service Award (NRSA) from NHLBI. The award will support his project "Metabolic/Electrophysiological Model of the Heart under Ischemia/Reperfusion", which aims to address the ways in which coupling between metabolic and electrophysiological processes in the whole heart contribute to the risk of arrhythmia under ischemia and reperfusion. The fellowship provides three years of support for research training.
February 13, 2011
Jason Constantino placed third in the young investigators poster competition (translational category) at the Gordon Research Conference on Cardiac Arrhythmia Mechanisms, which was held on February 13-19 at Galveston, Texas. His poster was entitled, "Systems Biology Approach to Cardiac Electromechanics: Impaired Calcium Kinetics and Remodeled Ventricular Structure Prolong the Electromechanical Delay in Dyssynchronous Heart Failure."
August 2010
2010
Jason Bayer, a PhD student in Dr. Trayanova's lab, has been awarded an American Heart Association predoctoral fellowship. Jason's research is part of an ongoing collaborative study with Dr. Sanjiv Narayan at the University of California, San Diego, that focuses on elucidating the underlying mechanisms of T-wave alternans in human heart failure. More specifically, he will be utilizing a combined clinical and computational modeling approach to investigate the role of cellular alternans in T-wave alternans that precede lethal ventricular arrhythmias. The overall goal of the research is to optimize T-wave alternans testing and risk stratification of arrhythmia vulnerability in patients to improve the success and economics of arrhythmia prevention. The duration of the award is from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2012.
June 2010
Jason Bayer has been selected as a finalist in the Young Investigator Competition at the International Congress of Electrocardiology in Lund, Sweden, June 2010. The title of his talk will be "Spacially discordant alternans in action potential voltage underlie T-wave alternans in human heart failure."
2010
Two of Dr. Trayanova's students have been awarded National Research Service Awards (NRSA) from NHLBI worth five years of research training support.
- Hermenegild Arevalo won the award to support his project "Image-based models that predict arrhythmia morphology in post-infarction hearts." The goal of the project is to examine the ventricular tachycardia reentrant pattern in the infarcted heart and its dependence on the morphology of the infarct scar.
- Jason Constantino's research project, "Image-based models of electromechanics in normal and failing hearts," aims to characterize the relation between electrical activation and mechanical contraction in normal and failing hearts under different loading conditions. The new insights gained from this project are expected to ultimately lead to rational optimization of cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) delivery and improvement in selection criteria for identifying viable CRT candidates.
2009
Dr. Natalia Trayanova has been selected as a Fellow of the American Heart Association. The most distinguished level of the society, Fellow status recognizes members who have realized major professional achievement and leadership within the American Heart Association.
October 2009
Dr. Natalia Trayanova was named the William R. Brody Faculty Scholar for her groundbreaking work in the development of computational tools and simulations that advance understanding and improve the treatment of cardiac rhythm disorders. Faculty Scholars are named for a three-year term and provide exceptional faculty with flexible financial support to promote their research, teaching activities, and entrepreneurial thinking.
2008
Lukas Rantner received the prestigious DOC fellowship award from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. This is a 2-year fellowship awarded to "highly qualified doctoral students, irrespective of their research area. This highly competitive fellowship is awarded based on international peer review of the applicant's detailed research proposal."
2008
Dr. Natalia Trayanova, of the Institute for Computational Medicine and Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, was just selected as a Fellow of the
Heart Rhythm Society. The most distinguished level of the society, Fellow status recognizes members who have realized significant professional achievement, provided exceptional service, and are prominent in the field of cardiac arrhythmia research and treatment. Natalia will be honored at the society's annual meeting, in mid-May. More information about the Heart Rhythm Society can be found
August 2007
On the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Fox News 45, a local tv station, interviewed Dr. Trayanova and her students about the disruption Katrina caused both in their academic work and their personal lives and how the professor and her students moved to a new "home" at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. This was featured on their News at 10 broadcast and can be viewed
August 2007
Dr. Viatcheslav Gurev, a post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Trayanova's Computational Cardiac Electrophysiology Lab, has been awarded a post- doctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association for the project "Defibrillation mechanisms in ventricular dilatation: the role of active deformation". The duration of the fellowship is 2 years, commencing on August 1, 2007.
May 2007
The competitive renewal of the research grant entitled "Virtual Electrode Hypothesis for Defibrillation" was awarded by the National Institutes of Health to Dr. Efimov (PI) from Washington University at St. Louis and Dr. Trayanova (co-PI). Funding for the project commenced in May 2007. Project duration is 4 years.
February 2007
Dr. Trayanova was awarded a new NIH research grant entitled "Defibrillation Mechanisms in Infarcted Hearts". The award is for 4 years, and the total award is $2,130,611.
October 2006
In October 2006 Dr. Trayanova was awarded a new NSF grant entitled "Shock-Induced Arrhythmogenesis in Regional Myocardial Ischemia". The award is of 3 year duration.
August 2006
The Computational Cardiac Electrophysiology Laboratory relocated to Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Trayanova became a Professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Institute for Computational Medicine.
2006
Brock Tice, a graduate student in Dr. Trayanova's Computational Cardiac Electrophysiology Lab, has been awarded a pre-doctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association for the project "Investigation into the mechanisms of defibrillation failure using high-resolution models of cadiac tissue". The duration of the fellowship is 2 years, commencing on July 1, 2006.
2006
"Tulane Researchers Know Secrets of the Heart" (an article in the Tulane New Wave about Dr. Trayanova and the research in her lab)
2006
Two of Dr. Trayanova's graduate students won Tulane research awards at the end of this academic year:
- Molly Maleckar, Outstanding Graduate Student Award, Tulane School of Engineering
- Brock Tice, Outstanding Research Graduate Student Award, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tulane University
October 2005
Due to Hurricane Katrina, during October through December 2005 the Cardiac Computational Electrophysiology Laboratory temporarily relocated to the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.
September 2005
The competitive renewal of the research grant entitled "Cardiac Tissue Structure in the Defibrillation Process" was awarded by the National Institutes of Health to Dr. Trayanova (PI). Funding for the project has commenced as of September 2005.
April 2005
Dr. Trayanova received the Tulane University Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarship.
April 2005
At the Senior Awards Banquet of the Tulane School of Engineering, two graduate students from Dr. Trayanova's lab received awards for excellence in research and scholarship: Weihui Li, recipient of the Tulane School of Engineering Graduate Student Award, and Hermenegild Arevalo, recipient of the Van Buskirk Award.
February 2005
Dr. Trayanova and her students attended the Gordon Conference on Cardiac Arrhythmia Mechanisms in St. Ivez Valley, CA. At The Conference, Dr. Trayanova was elected as the Vice Chair of the 2007 and the Chair of the 2009 Gordon Conference.
2005
PhD student Mary Molly Maleckar won the Award for Best Poster Presentation in the Tissue/Organ Category at the 2005 Gordon Research Conference.
January 2005
Dr. Trayanova was appointed to the Editorial Board of the journal Heart Rhythm.
December 13, 2004
The Bulgarian daily newspaper "Trud" published an article about Dr. Natalia Trayanova and her research.
October 1, 2004
Dr. Trayanova meets the Nobel Laureate Sir Andrew Huxley in Oxford.
July 25, 2004
Dr. Natalia Trayanova and her research team were profiled on Bulgarian TV. The series, of which the show was part, is entitled "The Other Bulgaria". It is one of the highest-rated shows on Bulgarian TV. For information regarding the show (in Bulgarian)
May 2004
Dr. Blanca Rodriquez, post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Trayanova's lab, won the Young Investigator Award in Basic Science at the Heart Rhythm Society meeting held in San Francisco, May 2004.
2004
The research grant entitled "The Role of Electroporation in Defibrillation" was awarded by the National Institutes of Health to Dr. Igor Efimov (PI) and Dr. Trayanova (co-PI). Funding for the project will commence in October 2004.
