POSITION DESCRIPTION

-Research Project / Research Group Description:

Scientists have been studying the heart and the brain for centuries but mainly at an individual organ level. There is a need for a more systemic approach to study the physiology of some neurological and cardiovascular processes that remain not well understood, even with the current deluge of medical data and advanced computational tools available nowadays. A good example involves brain development, in normal and abnormal conditions such as Intra-Uterine Growth Restriction (IUGR) or congenital heart disease (CHD). There are plain and numerous evidences on their effect on the cardiovascular system and in the brain of these infants, but they have never been studied together. The aim of this project is to create a computational platform, linking heart and brain systems, to test the influence of the cardiovascular system on brain development in normal and abnormal conditions. It will include data management tools, data processing and machine learning techniques to identify different developmental trajectories, a mechanistic model of brain development under the influence of cardiovascular abnormalities and visualization tools for scientific dissemination and promote healthy foetal and post-natal life. Retrospective clinical data from hearts and brains of IUGR and CHD available at Hospital Clínic de Barcelona will be used in this project, as well as Big Data from the Developing Human Connectome Project.
This project is strongly interdisciplinary, joining clinical and technical expertise, with a team of senior, postdocs and junior researchers from different disciplines, available in the hosting research group and from our collaborators (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya; Imperial College London; Aix-Marseille Université; Hospital Clínic de Barcelona; Barcelona Supercomputing Centre; Instituto Neurociencias Alicante). This project will be complementary to existing research in our institution where computational tools are developed in several clinical applications. 

-Job position description:

The ultimate goal of this project is to contribute with advanced computational tools towards improving the clinical management of young patients with brain-heart problems, which is of a great social and economic relevance. Brain development will be studied by developing multi-system models combined with data to investigate the influence of the cardiovascular system.
The first task will involve gathering into a single database the retrospective clinical data of hearts and brains from patients, from birth to teenagerhood, available from our clinical partners. Subsequently, longitudinal imaging-derived indices will be jointly analyzed with clinical demographic data for classification purposes. The analysis of this Big Data will require advanced machine learning techniques to model brain progression. Next, innovative phenomenological and mechanistic models of cardiovascular haemodynamics will be coupled with existing brain development models. 3D finite element and mesh-less models of the brain would be studied, together with lumped models for the circulation between the heart and the brain.
We are looking for a highly motivated young researcher with a Master degree in Biomedical Engineering, Physics, Mechanical Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Computational Science, or related disciplines. Having proven programming skills would be of importance. Candidates must have excellent teamwork and communication skills (fluency in English is a must). The PhySense group and the BCN-MedTech unit form an ideal environment for training early stage researchers. We provide interdisciplinary doctoral training aimed at educating academic persons with the required skills and flexibility to function and perform in a broad range of employment opportunities in a clinical, academic or industrial environment, in the field of Biomedicine and Bioengineering.

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