Bio: Amanda Randles is an assistant professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University. She has courtesy appointments in the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Material Science, Computer Science and Mathematics, and is a member of the Duke Cancer Institute. She got her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2013, and has been the recipient of the Lawrence Fellowship (Lawrence Livermore National Lab.), the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship (Google), and the George Michael Memorial High Performance Computing Fellowship (ACM/IEEE) among many accomplishments in her early career. Her research in biomedical simulation and high performance computing focuses on the development of new computational tools that she uses to provide insight into the localization and development of human diseases ranging from atherosclerosis to cancer.

Massively Parallel Simulations of Hemodynamics in the Human Vasculature

The recognition of the role hemodynamic forces have in the localization and development of disease has motivated large-scale efforts to enable patient-specific simulations. When combined with computational approaches that can extend the models to include physiologically accurate hematocrit levels in large regions of the circulatory system, these image-based models yield insight into the underlying mechanisms driving disease progression and inform surgical planning or the design of next generation drug delivery systems. Building a detailed, realistic model of human blood flow, however, is a formidable mathematical and computational challenge. The models must incorporate the motion of fluid, intricate geometry of the blood vessels, continual pulse-driven changes in flow and pressure, and the behavior of suspended bodies such as red blood cells. In this talk, I will discuss the development of HARVEY, a parallel fluid dynamics application designed to model hemodynamics in patient-specific geometries. I will cover the methods introduced to reduce the overall time-to-solution and enable near-linear strong scaling on up to 1,572,864 core of the IBM Blue Gene/Q supercomputer. Finally, I will present the expansion of the scope of projects to address not only vascular diseases, but also treatment planning and the movement of circulating tumor cells in the bloodstream.

Prof. Randles is being hosted by Dr. Carrasco-Teja (MICDE). If you would like to meet her during her visit please send an email to [email protected]