SYNOPSIS

Prof Nic Peter Smith will be sharing a presentation on some of the exciting developments taking place globally within his discipline of Biomedical Engineering, including his own research on how mathematical modelling can help improve heart patient recovery plans.


BIODATA OF SPEAKER

Prior to joining the Faculty of Engineering, University of Auckland in August 2013, Nic Smith was Head of Biomedical Engineering at Kings College, London and before that Professor of Computational Physiology at the University Computing Laboratory, University of Oxford. He is a Honorary Consultant at Guys and St Thomas' Hospital London and a Fellow of the Newton Institute University of Cambridge. Professor Smith leads a computational modelling group which is currently a central contributor to the European based Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) Project. He has authored over 150 peer reviewed journal publications, 300 conference publications and is on the editorial board for the international peer review journals including the Journal of Physiology, Microcirculation, Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing and International journal of Computational Methods in Bioengineering. He is the lead-author on several patent applications filed with the United States and European Patent Offices, which outline intellectual property covering the development of anatomically based physiological models and specific applications.

Professor Smith's research is characterised by the development of integrated multi-scale and multi-physics models, which provide the ability to link biophysically detailed experimental data to integrated function from sub-cellular to the whole organ level. Within the scope of this work, he has developed computational techniques to enable specific model developments that have in turn been applied to provide insight into both basic physiology and clinical contexts. This research is focused on electrophysiology and contraction at the cellular level and the multi-scale translation of these models to simulate blood flow and cardiac electro-mechanics at the tissue level. Prof Nic holds a Bachelor of Engineering with First Class Honours and a PhD, both in Engineering Science, from the University of Auckland.