Center for Biomedical Computing (SFF)

Center for Biomedical Computing (SFF)

Center for Biomedical Computing (CBC) aims to develop and apply novel simulation technologies to reach new understanding of complex physical processes affecting human health. We target selected medical problems where insight from mathematical modeling can contribute to changing clinical practice.

The approach comprises well-defined research projects with multi-disciplinary teams consisting of experts in physical modeling, mathematics, numerical methods, scientific software development, bioengineering, medical research, and clinical treatment. Our teams focus on publishing novel research results of high relevance and quality.

The challenging applications being addressed drive new developments in computational methodologies and scientific software. A key mission of the Center is to make these useful developments accessible to computational scientists and engineers at large through professional, open source software. This original software can help advancing many other scientific fields dealing with complex multi-physics problems.

Three main research tasks

The Center for Biomedical Computing is devoted to three main objectives:

  1. The development of computational middleware that can be used to model the flow of bodily fluids in the cardiovascular system and spinal cord, 
  2. robust flow solvers, and
  3. applications to biomedical fluid flow problems - applying mathematical modelling to physiological issues.

These highly integrated topics represent a broad, a medium, and a specialized scope, respectively, of advancing the current state of computational fluid dynamics.

The computational middleware is meant to be a useful “Matlab-like” set of tools generally applicable to computational scientists for rapid prototyping of multi-physics software based on partial differential equations.

The flow solvers part aims to advance the computational middleware in the specific direction of robust adaptive implicit finite element methods for viscous and turbulent fluid flow.

The application part will use the flow solvers in combination with the computational middleware to attack challenging biomedical flow problems.

Different applications and results

The composition of three main themes ensures results of different flavor. First, the computational middleware will be generally useful and has the potential of achieving substantial impact in science. Second, the flow solver part continues research of outstanding quality and usefulness in fluid dynamics. Finally, the application part addresses a new and vital class of challenging physical problems where mathematical modeling is in its initial stages. The three parts also span the range of natural science research, from generic application-independent tools via methods for a wide class of applications (fluid flow) to specific physical problems. 

The group behind this project has an excellent track record for developing computational middleware and numerical methods, and applying these tools to solve problems in natural science. For both the computational middleware and flow solver parts, we intend to invite very promising young researchers from outstanding groups for long-term stays in the center and thereby help to increase the scientific quality of our group. Biomedical flow investigations will be done in close collaboration with scientists with vast experience in this field.

For more information, please visit the CBC website.