Heart failure research wins award

University of Auckland

24th September 2013

Heart failure research wins award

A presentation on the structure and function relationship in heart failure by Alexander Wilson has won the Auckland Bioenginnering Institute’s John Carman prize.

The annual prize is awarded for the best oral presentation by a graduate student at the New Zealand Medical Sciences Congress (held in Queenstown each year), for biomedical engineering, computational physiology and/or biophysics.

Alexander’s oral presentation was chosen from those given by five other finalists at the MedSci Congress in late August. He was unable to attend the dinner award ceremony at the conference, and so his prize was presented by ABI director, Professor Peter Hunter recently.

The prize honours lifetime achievements ofEmeritus Professor John Carman was the University of Auckland’s founding Professor of Anatomy at the School of Medicine where he was head of department for more than 30 years. He was one of the first people at the University to believe the use of numbers would enhance medical knowledge. He died last year, but attended the inaugural presentation of the award in 2010.

“John Carman was a unique and wonderful individual, a passionate anatomist with a penchant for engineering,” says Professor Hunter. “John very early on recognised the potential of computational anatomy and physiology to improve medical outcomes. His support greatly helped the growth of bioengineering as a discipline in New Zealand.”

Alexander is enrolled in the first year of his PhD studies, using computer modelling to better understand heart failure. His PhD supervisors are Associate Professor Ian Le Grice from physiology and Professor Martyn Nash from the ABI.

“In my PhD project the outcome we are seeking is to provide insight that will lead to effective treatment of diastolic heart failure. Currently there is no effective treatment of diastolic heart failure,” he says.

“Most of the work so far is using small animal MRIs to investigate a rat model of heart failure,” says Alex. “I’m looking at what are the important aspects of the changes in the heart structure in different types of heart failure.”

“I’m examining total collagen and heart mass, and if it is a combination of these, or a subset of these that causes heart failure,” he says. “By making these models we can test each component of heart failure, such as how stiff the heart wall is or how the ventricles are affected by heart failure.”

Alexander has a BSc degree in biomedical science that he followed with a Post-graduate Diploma in Science (Specialisation in medical science) and a Masters of Operations Research (First class honours) from Engineering Science.
He then worked for six months in the energy sector, but decided he wanted to continue studying biomedical science and took up a PhD project at ABI last year.

“I could have had a faster journey, but this means I have studied a good variety of subjects related to my research now,” he says.

ENDS

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