Our colleague Radek Halfar won 1st place in the "Information Technology and Electrical Engineering" category of the VSB-TUO competition for his dissertation titled "Dynamics of cardiac electrophysiology models", which he worked on under the supervision of Marek Lampart. He received the award at the Ceremonial Meeting of the VSB-TUO Scientific Council on Thursday 21 March.

We would also like to mention another success of Radek, ranking 7th in the Best Dissertation category of the Werner von Siemens Prize for 2023.

Radek explains what he investigated in his dissertation:

"I have delved deeper into the dynamics of cardiac electrophysiology models. Cardiac arrhythmias are a prevalent disease in the developed world, especially in the elderly population, and a leading cause of death. Their origin is very complex and difficult to predict. The origin of this disease can be due to various factors such as scarring of the heart tissue after a heart attack, blocked coronary arteries, and COVID-19 infection. In my work, I analysed the dynamic properties of cardiac electrophysiology and their changes during the pathophysiological propagation of electrical signals in the heart. Using nonlinear analysis of mathematical models of cardiac cells, I identified combinations of stimulation frequencies and amplitudes that elicit chaotic responses of cardiac electrophysiology. I also described the potential of using artificial intelligence to detect danger spots based on the spatial arrangement of scars in the heart."

Radek, which field of study did you major in?

“I studied Biomedical Technology, Biomedical Engineering, Computational and Applied Mathematics, and my PhD is from the Computational Sciences programme run by IT4Innovations. Thanks to the Technology for the Future 2.0 project, I also completed an internship at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia, where I collaborated in research with scientists not only from Australia but also from Brazil.”

What role did supercomputers play in your research?

“The computational resources of IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center enabled me to model a huge number of simulations, making it possible to analyse the behaviour of cardiac electrophysiology depending on the required parameters.
I now work mainly on projects in the areas of AI applications and data analysis.”

Congratulations to Radek, and we wish him all the best.