My first collaboration is out! My secondment in Freiburg just ended up with an amazing publication Out now on Science Advances! Stem cells are a wonderful tool to create atrial cardiomyocytes that spontaneously and continuosly beat in a dish… but what happen if we transfect them with the highly potassium selective channelrhodopsin WiChR? WiChR is …

The best “non-Summer” of my life From Karlsruhe all the way to “the most innovative town of the planet” The city of Boston from the Cambridge side of the Charles River When we think of Summer, we usually picture in our minds sunny days, beach holidays and thousands of sunsets at amazing spots. Well – …

Updates from a very busy year Now that we can safely travel again, there’s some catching up due for PersonalizeAF members! Okay, let’s take this out of the way from the git-go: this blog has been a bit silent for quite a while. I have no excuse for that except to say that I and …

5th PersonalizeAF meeting in Bordeaux, France The University of Bordeaux will host the next PersonalizeAF, during 4th and 5th of July 2022 Next 4 and 5th of July, the PersonalizeAF consortium will meet for the first time in person. After two years of online meetings and workshops, most of the consortium will meet in Bordeaux, …

Research = exchange From the EP-lab to a basic research lab Hallo! Wie geht’s? It’s been a while since I last posted. So long, that I even changed from speaking in Catalan to German in the work environment. “How so? Weren’t you doing your PhD in Barcelona?”, you may ask. And you’re right, but as …

Scientific Cooperation: Too many cooks don’t spoil the broth close up shot of M. tuberculosis, arranged in colonies (CDC/Dr. George Kubica, Public Health Image Library 1976) This time we are starting way back, 9 thousand years to be precise; to an untimely death of a mother and her infant in the eastern mediterranean, – taken …

Science and Art: Beauty in the Lab A painting of sea roses by Claude Monet and a fluorescence image of a coculture, can you tell where one begins and the other ends? Bull’s head sculpture by Pablo Picasso, made from a bicycle’s seat and handlebar Because this post is going to be about art, it …

Global Atrial Fibrillation Aware Week Global Atrial Fibrillation Aware Week and the impact of AF in the population This week, as every year, from AF Association, hosts the Global AF Aware Week, with the aim of raising awareness of Atrial Fibrillation. Under the slogan “No More Time To Lose”, it aims to address the impact …

Success and Failure Failure is all around the academic career, be that during experiments or grant applications. But is this always a bad thing? How to deal with it? A while ago, Teresa made a post here talking about imposter syndrome and perseverance during the PhD. I had been wondering about similar topics myself. Reading …

How a young chess champion from the rural town of Famaillá, Tucumán, Argentina became a nuclear engineer working on Atrial Fibrillation in Norway Hi everyone, my name is Sergio Nabil Gadur. I am 27 years old. I come from the northern part of Argentina. My town is characterized by the National Festival of Empanada and …

One year on.. The more you know, the less you know! Hey everyone! This is Narimane Early-Stage researcher number 10 from Bordeaux. Now I am on my way to the land of cheese and chocolate, I thought it’s the perfect timing for writing. I am really thrilled to finally type down another blog post, after a …

PersonalizeAF participates in Atrial Signals Conference ESRs and supervisors attend the conference to show their research and to promote the project Last 23th-25th of September, some PersonalizeAF members, including Early Stage Researchers and Supervisors, attended the Atrial Signals Conference 2021 in Karlsruhe (Germany) http://www.atrial-signals.kit.edu/. The conference was  organized by joint forces of the Institute of …

CinC 2021, In-person meetings closer and closer I remembered Computing in Cardiology (CinC) as a lovely experience. CinC 2019 was my first glimpse into the academic world. I had  just finished my bachelor’s degree and I was presenting part of my thesis in an international conference. It was my first conference, as well as the …

Matching online faces with funny people It has been a long time but always for a good reason 😉 It sounds crazy but today is exactly one year since I started my PhD in Karlsruhe. I have not always been happy during corona winter months, but we made it until here and finally it happened: …

Gutta cavat lapidem Hi everybody, it’s been a while, but here I am again. The past months have been quite intense, many collaborations in the pipeline and a lot of networking. Those of you who follow me on twitter might already know that I participated in a scientific retreat (CRC). It’s been a somehow unexpected …

Creating a virtual heart To produce a piece of art you will first need a canvas Patricia Martínez Díaz  27. September. 2021 Hey! Welcome back. It’s been almost a year since the beginning of my PhD and I would like to celebrate my first 12 months working as a researcher by sharing with you a …

We are real people! For the first time since the beginning of PersonalizeAF, we have finally met each other in person (partially)! In the words of a certain punk-pop band, summer has come and passed, and it is almost time to wake them up by the end of September. I am a little bit behind …

Decision-making under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases Happy readers, Today I would like to discuss with you a paper by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman [*] about the heuristics that used by people when making judgments in uncertain conditions. In their work, the authors review the influence of representativeness, information availability, as well as adjustment and …

Application of 3D printing in Cardiology and Atrial fibrillation: This post explains the importance and application of modern manufacturing technology “3D printing” in cardiology to better understand cardiac models. 3D printing is an intersection of printing and materials-engineering. Non-invasive diagnostic imaging and computer-aided design (CAD) and intervention in the heart’s structure. Cardiology’s uses developed by this …

Echocardiography and Atrial fibrillation This post is about echocardiography and its application in atrial fibrillation An echocardiogram (echo) is a test that uses high frequency sound waves (ultrasound) to make pictures of your heart. The test is also called echocardiography or diagnostic cardiac ultrasound. An echo uses sound waves to create pictures of the heart’s …

Cells from Cells from Cells – The (never)ending cycle of life Prometheus being attacked by an eagle, depicted in a sculpture by Nicolas-Sébastien Adam, 1762 (Louvre) In a tale of ancient Greek mythology, Prometheus is chained to the rocky mountains of the Caucasus, having his liver ripped out every day by an eagle, only for …

Evolution and documentation This month’s post is a reflection on the human nature and poorly written codes Summer finally arrived in the Netherlands with a pretty hot weather even for my Brazilian standards, and I have thankfully been able to spend more and more time outside and even get some color (which in my case …

Snapping out of confinement some tunnels happen to be longer than others but there’s always a light at the end of every tunnel Hey everyone! This is Narimane early-stage researcher number 10 from Bordeaux. This is my time of the month when I sit down, hit the pause button, and think about my failures and …

Implementing a new model Reading Literature… Some months have passed since I started working a new version of the Eikonal model. Creating a computational model to solve a biological question has many steps. First it is important to understand the problem at hand. If you don’t have too much experience in the subject, it might …

How can we create heart cells in the lab? Hello everyone, It’s Marilù Casini here (ESR1) and in my previous blog I explained what stem cells are and what they can do. If you lost the article, I highly recommend checking it out. This time we are going to talk about science and cells, the …

Sunny days, brighter ideas! Hey! It’s a new month and PersonalizeAF people know it 🙂 May approaches towards its end and, with it, longer days are often also sunny days. To me, that makes easier to focus on work, as I really feel the opportunity to do some activities outside afterwards. Regarding my research, I …

Transitions Spring came with challenges and new developments for my project in PersonalizeAF! Time has been running faster than I can follow up during this pandemic. April went by in the blink of an eye and here I am already a few days late for my post. This was a month for transitions: winter is …

Teamwork always work If you ever find yourself in a cloud don’t go through it alone.. Hey all, this is Narimane early stage researcher 10 from Bordeaux. Let me say, it was a very intense month, we were kept very busy with the lectures, assignments, and deadlines.  As you may already know, the second workshop …

Ready to work in three fronts Main Project  The core of openCARP is complicated and it has many layers. For that reason, it took me a bit to understand the code. However, my understanding has significantly improved in the last weeks. I have also implemented a big part of the eikonal model part in openCARP …

Keep moving, keep learning! Hi there! It has been a long time since my last post but I have new things to tell you all!  In the Easter break I had the opportunity to go to Munich to visit one of my best friends since my university years in Valencia. Four years after living an …

How virtual hearts can save real hearts Patricia Martínez Díaz  4. May. 2021 In previous blogs, we talked about the theoretical basis for understanding how virtual hearts are made. We described the Hodking-Huxley mathematical models and how they helped us to improve our knowledge of the electrical activity of cells. In fact, those equations were …

Clinical Decision Support Systems Hello and welcome, happy readers! I hope you are well and in good health in these difficult times. Today I would like to talk to you about clinical decision support systems- early implementations, the existing types, and state of the art techniques. Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) are computer-based programs that …

CV? Curriculum Vitae? Oh, Conduction Velocity! Getting deeper in the calculus of substrate magnitudes It has been a while since I began the journey of my PhD. I remember that, especially in the first months, I spent a lot of my time reading about atrial fibrillation (AF), therapies to treat it, like pulmonary vein isolation …

Inducing fibrillation episodes ex vivo Hi there! As I mentioned in my last post, this post will be dedicated to inducing atrial fibrillation in tissue culture. If we think about the “macro” triggers which increase the predisposition for fibrillating episodes to happen, this can be due to several risk factors such as comorbidities, emotional triggers …

Is there room for creativity in science? Scientists have very strict methods to follow during their work. Can they be creative despite it? The months of March and April are being very eventful for the ESRs of PersonalizeAF. We had our 2nd Consortium meeting last month, which has been a great opportunity to see what …

2nd Consortium Meeting and training course March 10th and 11th : 2nd meeting of PersonalizeAF Network The first of the four years of the project (1 February 2020 to 31 January 2024) came to an end on 1 February. Therefore, it was necessary to ctarry out an analysis of what has happened in this year …

A Brief Introduction to the Patch Clamp Technique and the Hodgkin–Huxley Equations Patricia Martínez Díaz  6. April. 2021 Hello and welcome back! Now that we had explained some of the basics of electrophysiological modeling in the previous posts, this time I am going to talk about the Patch clamp technique and to further explain the …

Localized AF Drivers Multiple Wavelets In the previous post, I have addressed the inefficiency of pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) in patients with persistent forms of atrial fibrillation (AF) and the need for alternative ablation targets. A natural choice is the AF driving mechanisms- anatomical or functional sources maintaining AF episodes. So, what are these mechanisms? …

My PhD journey The main part of the PhD is of course my thesis project but there’s a lot more to do and to learn. Hey all, this is Narimane early-stage researcher 10 from Bordeaux. I thought I would post a quick hello and catch-up with all my news as I haven’t posted in a …

And you… How much do you read? Against all odds, I was able to travel home for Christmas. I had many flights canceled, since most European countries, terrified by the rapid spread of the new variant discovered in the UK, closed borders and restricted air travelling. But as we usually say in Valencia: “third time …

Getting deeper into the research world After these first months I am starting to get more responsibilities Hello everyone! Here I am again in another update on my PhD experience. As you may know from previous posts, so far I have been mostly involve in reading about AF, ECGI and implemented my own rotor detection …

And that’s what being in the university “from the other side” feels… Oktober, November, Dezember, Januar, Februar, März… I am not crazy, just studying German but… HAVE I BEEN WORKING HERE ALREADY FOR SIX MONTHS !?With the new year, I have been thinking that I should change my way of thinking during this pandemic situation: let’s focus …

Supervising student projects Today, I will tell you a bit about supervising students being a PhD candidate. Here at KIT, research assistants have the opportunity to help supervising projects for bachelor or master’s thesis. I will talk the beginning of this experience for me. Work with openCARP …  In the last post I talked about …

How does your heart beat? We all know our heart beats, but how? What affects this beating? Since the beginning of our lives, we have been told about our heart beating. We grow up knowing we have some kind of pump inside our chest that beats and beats and beats and it never stops beating …

From patient to cells, from cells to patient Hello everyone! It’s Marilù here and today we are going to explore together the magic world of the stem cells. In the 2012 the two researchers John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the human induced pluripotent stem cells. Also known …

Dynamical systems and teaching Teaching is part of the scientific career and, this month, it was my turn to get a bit involved with it! One of the big reasons I ended up in a scientific career is teaching. Even though it does not occupy the largest chunk of the job, teaching was one of …

Arrhythmic behaviour: single-cell vs tissue level Hi everyone! It’s been a while. This start of the year has been quite busy between starting new collaborations, experiments, analysis and presentations. I can’t complain though, there are many exciting things in queue! My last post was about cardiac electro-mechanics and some introduction to slice culture. I left …

New year, New challenges! Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations… I am a little bit late but since It’s my first post this year : I wish you all a happy new year may you be healthy and safe the whole year through. These are difficult times for all of us but now we …

11th of February: International Day of Women and girls in Science Women in STEM fields Last  11th of February, we celebrated International day of Women and Girls on science, day to fulfil the and to encourage the equal opportunities among genders in STEM fields. Along the years, women have improved their positions in representations, payments, …

A Better Target The Era of Non-pharmacologic Treatment Approaches for Atrial Fibrillation My research activities as a part of PersonalizeAF team mainly focus on detection and localization of regions in atria exhibiting some specific types of electrical activities or conduction patterns as we call them. We aim to develop computational tools that can robustly pinpoint …

Making some progress Vaccination and my rotor algorithm seem to be moving on. Hello everyone! I hope you all are okay in this convulsive times. I must say that I am quite optimistic about making through this pandemic soon with all these new vaccination campaigns running in Europe. So hold on mates! The end is …

A look into our heart How can we actually see the results we get from computer models? I am a bit late to say this, but since this is my first post of the year, here it goes: Happy 2021! The beginning of the year has been somewhat chaotic around the world, but the prevailing …

Using Computer Models to Study the Heart II. The Electrical Analogue Patricia Martínez Díaz 1. February.2021 Welcome back! In our last post we explained that modeling is the process of using mathematical equations to describe the behavior of a system or a signal. Scientists use models to study the complex interactions between ions, channels, and intracellular mechanisms …

Rethinking the Inverse Problem of Electrocardiology Previously I have talked mostly about decision support systems, and sub-phenotypes of patients- groups of patients defined by their biomarkers, and how the identification of these groups is key to assessing what therapy will be successful. Today we will talk about a more fundamental problem which the computation of …

New year new challenges… Fresh start after holidays.. The first month of the year has finished. I was in holidays before so there is not too much to update. Unfortunately I was not able to visit my parents in Colombia. Nonetheless,I had a nice time during Christmas and New Years eve with my girlfriend in …

What being a researcher means Hello everyone! My name is Marilù Casini and I am officially part of this huge family around the world called PersonalizeAF. Every months me and all the other ESRs will keep you updated about our research project through this blog. But why do scientists write a blog?! Shouldn’t they only …

Dominant Frequency The electrical activity from another perspective. Hello everyone. First of all I would like to wish you all a happy new year! Things haven’t changed much regarding the pandemic, but let’s hope for this summer we can go back to all the normal things we do in vacations. In this post I am …

Explaining Blackboxes By the time this post is published, it will probably already be 2021, so I would like to start by wishing everyone a happy, healthy, and successful year! During the last blog post we have talked about how we want to represent patients as vectors composed of our patients’ biomarkers. The question at …

Clear waters with the new year Fresh mind for the new year – fresh energy for research! Happy new year everybody! The year of the lockdowns in Europe is over and we begin with the year of the vaccines.  We will have to be in a “soft” lockdown some more time before receiving the vaccine, …

Introducing some new friends in the atrium Seems like yesterday since I came to Karlsruhe, but here we are, 2020 is almost done and I am about to complete the third month of my PhD. A lot of things have changed during these months. For example, I ride my bike to go everywhere, no matter …

The Other Side of Being a PhD student …Because not everything is about research… I have realized that being a Ph.D. student is more than only doing research. In this post, I will talk about my experience with all these parallel activities. I worked on my research project but I have also attended online courses …

Navigating through the heart chambers Obtaining images and functional information from within the heart In the previous post I explained how in the Kick-Off meeting of the consortium we had the opportunity to  discuss our projects and what we would like to work on, apart from the networking we could do online and the courses …

Exploring atrial electro-mechanics This past month I took it easier with experiments as we had a three-week workshop, which in normal condition would have seen all personalizeAF ESRs gathered in Valencia. As you may guess, none of us had the chance to travel there. Nevertheless, I have to say that we were pretty good at …

Going around after rotors After the first Summer School of the consortium, I had the chance to start developing my own algorithms. The last week of October and first 2 of November were quite busy due to the organization of the first Summer School of the consortium. Although intense and compact, we received there very …

Are you ready to take on the world? Well.. if not that’s totally okay !! 🤷‍ Here we are 3 months after the start of my PhD.. it’s incredible how time flies by so fast .. A lot of things have changed through these months in my life and one of them: I am a …

Customers who have bought this item also bought… You have probably read this title before, and, if you have, you have already encountered a recommendation algorithm. In the most basic terms, a recommendation algorithm will determine what item you are most likely to purchase or like, based on some information it has about you. Most …

Using Computer Models to Study the Heart Patricia Martínez Díaz 1. December.2020 Welcome to my blog! Do you imagine a world where doctors have access to a digital version of their patients’ hearts and can use it to plan procedures before entering the operating room? This might sound like a dream, but it is becoming true. …

Decoding equations that encode the atrial cells I dived into the world of ionic modeling of the atrial cells and managed to unravel a little bit this vast field After some weeks with many changes and new things to learn and see in Maastricht, it was time to get my hands dirty again and dive …

What’s in a dish – food for cells and thought https://personalizeaf.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/ezgif.com-crop-1.mp4 “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” – just on of the many phrases reminding us that having a balanced diet is good for our health. And just like our whole body stays healthy from a variety of food, the individual cells of …

Your heart, Our mission ! More than 10 years ago I had my first lesson on the form and function of the human heart. I still remember my teacher saying that the heart works like a pump and has nothing to do with love and all that stuff 😂 Our heart is made up of …

Second month of my project is over… Last week, I completed my second month of work… I have discovered that I am very lucky to work at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at KIT. All my colleagues have been super friendly and helpful during my first weeks. They have even made some calls in German …

A great opportunity for moving to Germany (in times of Corona) A short story about how my 2020 birthday was, against all odds, an even more special one If you count the kilometers by car from my parent’s house to where I am sitting right now, Google Maps says that there are only 1492, but …

Reducing distances and new airs October was an exciting month with my first weeks in the Netherlands and PersonalizeAF events Being part of PersonalizeAF has guaranteed that every month is an interesting new experience with lots of things to do. This October was not different, with me moving to Maastricht, new analyses in the computer …

Networking from the comfort of my home Congresses have changed in COVID-19 times, but they are still engaging! Most researchers would agree on saying that attending congresses and symposiums is one of the exciting parts of the PhD life. Being able to speak, discuss, exchange ideas, listen and learn from the different researchers and other …

ECGI, AF, and food Providing some background Before starting to explain all the things I do, I think guys you deserve a more detailed explanation about my project and some background to understand it. I think this post is a nice opportunity to do so, right from the beginning. So, for those who do not …

Getting to the Heart of AF An amazing ride I left Germany for Valencia in late August 2020.With my whole life packed on my 1997 Honda Transalp, I went on a 5-day journey passing through central and southern France, as well as Catalonia. As I was passing stunning natural views, corona cases surged in the …

Myostretching with a view! View from the lab in Amsterdam. In healthy conditions the heart experiences several mechanical changes. Let’s just think about the pressure that the blood exert on the cardiac walls when it enters each chamber, or when it contracts to eject the blood in the systemic flow. When a pathological condition occurs, …

Data mining and statistics Workshop, from 26th October to 13th November First PersonalizeAF Workshop! We are pleased to present the first PersonalizeAF workshop “Data mining and statistics summer school”, starting to change the paradigm of Atrial Fibrillation, its classification and diagnosis in a European environment. This is the first of 7 courses aimed at providing …

29th October- Citizen Outreach Event You are invited to “Improving treatments for Atrial Fibrillation, a challenge for the welfare system” online webinar Have you ever wondered how Atrial Fibrillation affects patients? Or how AF research is evolving through the latest innovations in devices for the diagnosis and treatment of AF? If you have, you can’t …

Believe it or not, that’s life Who’d have ever guessed it? I am not going to talk about my story here, I am going to talk about my luck. As it happens sooner or later to every student, I as well went through a period of indecision in which dropping out of education seemed the …

A Beginning A Perfect End to an Extraordinary Year Who could know that the year which we have spent indoors would take me into an exciting journey to one of the prettiest places in Europe? After some remote working, now I am finally in Maastricht and have already started playing with atrial electrogram data! This …

An eventful month Victor’s last month working from abroad was busy with a conference, a hackathon and a nice surprise Being one of the few ESRs still outside of Europe did not prevent my month of September to be full of very interesting experiences from the comfort of my Brazilian home. Apart from the research …

Colour inside the lines… and the left atrium! Improving step by step: segmentation Remember when you were 4 and you used to draw and paint pictures of cute animals or superheroes? Remember what your parents and your teachers used to tell you? “Colour inside the lines, do not cross the lines when you are painting!”. …

Hi! it’s Carlos New in the field of Atrial fibrillation I guess 2020 has been quite an odd year for everybody, but in my case, moving back to my home country in the middle of an epidemic to start a fresh new project It’s been an experience. On the one hand, many good things have …

On the Bridge between medicine and mathematics My journey from having a double life in Colombia to doing research in Germany… Hi there! Let me introduce myself. My name is Cristian and I am from Colombia, a place of warmhearted people and beautiful nature. For most of my life, I have been involved with two …

Straight to the heart Hello everyone, my name is Narimane and my friends call me Nar ( fire in Arabic ) and I do believe that keeping fire in your belly is the key to success. Place de la bourse through the eyes of Pauline Tifimiregnach Beginning, I must admit that writing is something I …

Duel of Fates – or “Am I an atrial cell yet?” Heart cell specification and differentiation The human body is made up of a lot of cells and most of them are very specialized: letting them bear loads, absorb nutrients, secrete hormones or process blog posts about specialized cells. The heart is no different in …

A Tour de Force for Atrial Cells Introducing you to cell isolation, calcium handling and the magic of life. These last two months have been crazy busy with experiments. The project I am working on right now aims at investigating local calcium releases, events called “calcium sparks”, after fast electrical stimulation of atrial cells to …

We weigh anchors. “Hola a tothom” from Barcelona! Fresh start for our non-invasive tool to help clinicians treat AF Me next to the UB Faculty of Medicine, my old faculty, next to my PhD office My 25 started in a very exciting way: new home, new job, new project… new life! Add coming back home to …

Computer models of the atria: first contact and challenges Get to know one of the models of the atria developed by the PersonalizeAF members in Maastricht Atrial fibrillation is a very complex and dynamic arrhythmia. Understanding the conditions for its maintenance and finding the most effective treatment strategies are challenging tasks. One very important tool …

The fibrillating beginning of my journey Universitätsbibliothek of Freiburg from the Synagogenplatz. It is crazy how time flies, one moment I was living under lockdown due to covid-19, and the next I am in Freiburg (Germany), starting a new experience and a new life. As you may know from my presentation on the personalizeAF website, …

A Dutch “Hoi” from Thomas HiPSC and me; new beginnings and endless possibilities Morning in the Netherlands In German when you speak of someone who is in need of a change of scenery, who wants to set out for something new, you refer to them as aching for “a wallpaper change”, as wanting a new …

Introducing Our ESRs: Hello from Victor Know more about my journey from Brazil all the way to Maastricht to join PersonalizeAF It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to. – J. R. …

PersonalizeAF starts! First steps in the project We are glad to announce that PersonalizeAF has already started. Since the official start date of PersonalizeAF project -February 1st 2020- we have been working hard to prepare everything in the project for the next 4 years. Even if we have faced some difficulties because of the COVID outbreak, …