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  1. 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.

  2. 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."


  3. "Distribution of Electromechanical Delay in the Heart: Insights from a Three-Dimensional Electromechanical Model" by V. Gurev, J. Constantino, J. J. Rice, and N. A. Trayanova was featured on the August 2010 cover of Biophysical Journal. The cover depicts the heterogeneous spatial distribution of the electromechanical delay during sinus rhythm (left) and after epicardial pacing (right) in a model of rabbit ventricular electromechanics. The background of the cover shows the Infiniband switches of the cluster where the experiments were simulated and a laptop used to perform visualization. The cover art was designed and photographed by Danielle Pershouse. Click here to go to the paper.

  4. 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.

  5. 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."


  6. Two of Dr. Trayanova's students have been awarded National Research Service Awards (NRSA) from NHLBI worth five years of research training support. You can read more news about the awards here.

    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.


  7. In March 2010, Dr. Natalia Trayanova was interviewed by Dr. Zipes for Rhythms in Review, the offical podcast of the Heart Rhythm society, for her paper "Mechanisms for Initiation of Reentry in Acute Regional Ischemia Phase 1B." Actual Episode | Link to paper | Official Podcast Link | iTunes Podcast Link

  8. 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.

  9. In 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.

  10. Grace Tan was awarded the 2009 Provost's Undergraduate Research Award (PURA). She and Dr. Trayanova were featured in an article written for the Johns Hopkins Gazette. You can find the full text [here]. Search for "Shed light on lethal heartbeats".

  11. Dr. Takashi Ashihara was awarded the 2009 Young Investigator Award by the Japanese Society of Electrocaridology for his work with Jason Constantino and Dr. Natalia Trayanova in the paper "Tunnel propagation of postshock activations as a hypothesis for fibrillation induction and isoelectric window," which can be found here.

  12. A paper written by Dr. Gernot Plank, Dr. Anton Prassl, Ernst Hofer, and Dr. Trayanova won the 2008 Stefan Schuy Award, an Annual Best Paper Award of the Austrian Society of Biomedical Engineering. The paper was titled "Evaluating intramural virtual electrodes in the myocardial wedge preparation: simulations of experimental conditions" and can be found here.

  13. 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."

  14. 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 [here]

  15. 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 [here] Click on the 'Tulane Lab at Johns Hopkins University' story in the right sidebar.

  16. 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.

  17. 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.

  18. Dr. Trayanova was awarded, on February 5, 2007, 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.

  19. 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.

  20. The Computational Cardiac Electrophysiology Laboratory relocated to Johns Hopkins University in August 2006. Dr. Trayanova became a Professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Institute for Computational Medicine.

  21. 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.

  22. "Tulane Researchers Know Secrets of the Heart" (an article in the Tulane New Wave about Dr. Trayanova and the research in her lab) [click here]

  23. 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
    [click here]

  24. 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.

  25. 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.

  26. In April 2005 Dr. Trayanova received the Tulane University Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarship.

  27. At the Senior Awards Banquet of the Tulane School of Engineering in April 2005, 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. [click here]

  28. In 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 [click here]. At the conference, her PhD student Mary Molly Maleckar won the Award for Best Poster Presentation in the Tissue/Organ Category. The Tulane newspaper, Hullabaloo, wrote an article about these achievements. [click here].

  29. In January 2005 Dr. Trayanova was appointed to the Editorial Board of the journal Heart Rhythm.

  30. The Bulgarian daily newspaper "Trud" published, on December 13, 2004, an article about
    Dr. Natalia Trayanova and her research. [click here]

  31. Dr. Trayanova meets the Nobel Laureate Sir Andrew Huxley on Oct.1, 2004 in Oxford. [click here]

  32. Dr. Natalia Trayanova and her research team were profiled on Bulgarian TV on July 25, 2004. 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) [click here]

  33. 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.

  34. 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.