News

2008:

• Dr. Yoram Rudy was elected as the Hein J.J. Wellens Distinguished Professor in Cardiology at the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands. Professor Rudy will conduct workshops on cardiac electrophysiology at the Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht (CARIM) during September 2008 and May 2009. He will also host visiting scientists from Maastricht University in his laboratory as part of a CBAC – CARIM collaboration in heart research

• The Winter 2007 issue of OUTLOOK, the Washington University School of Medicine magazine, featured the research conducted in Dr. Yoram Rudy's laboratory. A link to the article (a PDF file) is provided on the magazine cover page below:

Click the image above to view the article

2007:

• Dr. Rudy is the President of the Cardiac Electrophysiology Society (CES) for 2007-08. In this capacity, he organizes the annual scientific sessions for these years. The 2007 meeetings is in Orlando, Florida, November 3rd. The program topic is "Calcium Cycling: The Arrhythmia Connection"; the entire program can be viewed on http://www.cardiaceps.org/

• Charulatha Ramanathan and Ping Jia, co-founders of CardioInsight Technologies, were elected by CARIN'S Cleveland Business to " 2007 forty under 40". CardioInsight is developing Electrocardiographic Imaging (ECGI) as a clinical diagnostic tool. Charu and Ping are former Ph.D. students in the Rudy Lab. An article about Charu and Ping in
  CARIN'S Cleveland Business can be found at here.

• Dr. Yoram Rudy organized and chaired a workshop on "Systems Approach to Understanding Electromechanical Activity in the Human Heart" at the NIH-National Heart, Lung an Blood Institute (Washington, D.C., August 20 - 21, 2007). Workshop participants were 13 leading scientists in cardiac research. The workshop objectives were to discuss the state-of-the-art and identify challenges of integrating knowledge from the molecular and cellular scales to the whole-heart level, where cardiac arrhythmias and heart failure occur. The workshop participants have developed a list of recommendations for future research directions and NIH-NHLBI support. An executive summary of the workshop and recommendations are available on the NHLBI Website.

• The paper "Application of the Method of Fundamental Solutions to Potential-based Inverse Electrocardiography" by Yong Wang and Dr. Yoram Rudy had been chosen as the Outstanding Original Paper for 2006 in the Annals of Biomedical Engineering. The award carries a prise of $1500 that will be used to support Yong Wang (a Ph.D. student in the Rudy Lab) travel to a scientific meeting of his choice.

• Leonid Livshitz, Ph.D. from Dr. Yoram Rudy's lab won the first prize at the Gordon Research Conference on Cardiac Arrhythmia Mechanisms, Ventura Beach, California, March 18 – 23, 2007. His poster was entitled "Regulations of Calcium and Electrical Alternans in Cardiac Myocytes: Role of CaMKII and Repolarizing Currents". Here is the poster(PDF format, 760KB).

2006:

• Dr. Yoram Rudy has been appointed to the Board of Directors for the International Society for Computerized Electrocardiology (ISCE) for the term 2006-2007. He was also a member of the Executive Scientific Board, as well as chaired a session at, the 8th International Dead Sea Symposium and the Rappaport Symposium, “Consensus and Controversy in Cardiac Arrhythmias”, Tel-Aviv, Israel, October 2006.

• Charu Ramanathan and Ping Jia, former Ph.D. students of Dr. Rudy's, established CardioInsight Technologies, a startup company for developing Electrocardiographic Imaging (ECGI) as a clinical diagnostic tool for cardiac arrhythmias [view CardioInsight press release].

• Dr. Kathryn Yamada has been appointed as Director of the Mouse Cardiovascular Phenotyping Core of the Center for Cardiovascular Research, effective October 1, 2006.

• Dr. Dan Kelly has been appointed as the Director of Cardiology effective Monday, October 9, 2006.

• We would like to give a fond farewell to three of our original CBAC faculty members: Drs. Amir Amini, Kyongtae Bae, and Michael Cain. Dr. Amini has taken the position of Endowed Chair in Bioimaging, and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Louisville, KY. Dr. Cain has accepted the position of Dean of the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, NY.

• Dr. Jeanne Nerbonne and her colleagues at the Medical School, in collaboration with a group at Pfizer, St. Louis, have received a grant from the Washington University-Pfizer Biomedical Agreement. The title of the award is "Remodeling and Novel Biomarkers of Cardiovascular Disease in Type 2 Diabetes". For more information, refer to Page 13 of the CBAC Newsletter, Issue 2, Fall 2006.

• Dr. R. Martin Arthur has received a three-year, $818,414 grant from the National Cancer Institute for research titled “3D Noninvasive Temperature Estimation with Ultrasound”.

• Dr. Jean Schaffer received the 2006 Burroughs Wellcome Clinical Scientist Award in Translational Research to support her work on understanding how diabetes contributes to heart failure. The award offers $750,000 over five years for Dr. Schaffer to continue her research. For more information about this, and Dr. Schaffer's research on fat-induced cell dysfunction and cell death, refer to Pages 14-15 of the CBAC Newsletter, Issue 2, Fall 2006.

• Dr. John P. Boineau has published a book titled “The ECG in Multiple Myocardial Infarction and the Progression of Ischemic Heart Disease”. Please visit CardioRhythms, Inc. for more information.

• Drs. Yoram Rudy and Achi Ludomirsky participated in a Washington University delegation to Israel. The delegation included, among others, Chancellor Wrighton, Dean Shapiro, Dean Macias, and Francis Slay - the Mayor of St. Louis City. The delegation visited several universities and academic institutions in Israel. As a result of the visit, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology joined Washington University’s McDonnell International Scholars Academy, and Yoram Rudy will be the “ambassador” to Technion. Technion has a world renowned school of medicine and superb departments of biomedical and electrical engineering with a strong focus in cardiovascular research.

• The second edition of the CBAC Newsletter (Issue 2, Fall 2006) is now available on the web site in PDF format [1.66 MB].

• Dr. Yoram Rudy, the Fred Saigh Distinguished Professor of Engineering and Director of the Cardiac Bioelectricity and Arrhythmia Center (CBAC) delivered in June, 2006 two keynote presentations describing his work on noninvasive Electrocardiographic Imaging at the annual meetings of the International Society for Heart Research (Manchester, UK) and the International Congress on Electrocardiology (Cologne, Germany). Professor Rudy also delivered an invited presentation at Cardiostim – World Congress in Cardiac Electrophysiology and Cardiac Techniques (Nice, France) on the role of potassium ion channels in cardiac repolarization and its dependence on the channels’ molecular structure. In May, he participated as faculty in a Medtronic workshop for new leaders in cardiology and electrophysiology.

• In 2006, three new faculty members joined the CBAC center: Drs. Richard Gross, Jean Schaffer, and Arye Nehorai. Please visit the Faculty and Research pages to learn more information about the new members and their research.



• Dr. Yoram Rudy, the Fred Saigh Distinguished Professor of Engineering, delivered the Keynote Presentation “Electrocardiographic Imaging (ECGI): a new noninvasive imaging modality for cardiac electrophysiology and arrhythmia” at the SPIE Medical Imaging Conference in San Diego, February 11-16, 2006. Yoram also delivered an invited plenary presentation “Modeling Cardiac Arrhythmias” at a Keystone Symposium on Cardiac Arrhythmias: Linking Structural Biology to Gene Defects in Tahoe City, California, January 29-February 3, 2006.



• The first edition of the CBAC Newsletter (Issue 1, Spring 2006) is now available on the web site in PDF format [1.34 MB]. The CBAC Newsletter includes important information, research updates, news, and achievements of the center and its members. The Newsletter will add to CBAC’s already popular informational and educational dissemination sources that currently include the CBAC web site, the CBAC Seminar Series, and the CBAC Video Archives (downloadable video files of the CBAC seminars).

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2005:

• Dr. Yoram Rudy, Ph.D., F.A.H.A., The Fred Saigh Distinguished Professor of Engineering, in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, delivered the Kazuo Yamada Lecture titled “Noninvasive Electrocardiographic Imaging (ECGI) of Cardiac Electrophysiology and Arrhythmia” to the Japanese Society of Electrocardiology in Toyama, Japan on October 7, 2005. He also conducted a workshop on the molecular and genetic basis of cardiac arrhythmias in Nagoya, Japan on October 10, 2005.



• Congratulations to Lina El-Esber who received The Dr. Yoram Rudy Scholarship for the 2005 academic year [contributors to this scholarship fund are Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Brasch]. Lina is a graduate student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University.



• In a recent Gordon Research Conference on the Mechanisms of Cardiac Arrhythmia, Thomas Hund, Subham Ghosh, Leonid Livshitz and Jonathan Silva presented posters on their research projects.
  
  
• Jonathan Silva won first place in the research competition at the Gordon Research Conference on Cardiac Arrhythmia Mechanisms (Buellton, California, February 20-25). The title of his poster was “Molecular Interactions Determine Effects of Iks on the Cardiac Action Potential: Modulation by KCNE1 and Chromanol 293b” [poster pdf]. This work has now been published in Circulation 2005; 112: 1384-1391. Subham Ghosh was a third- place winner with the poster “Electrocardiographic Imaging (ECGI) of Cardiac Electrophysiology in Humans” [poster pdf]. This work has now been published in Annals of Biomed Eng 2005; 33: 1187-1201. Congratulations to both!
  
  
• Leonid Livshitz, Ph.D. presented a poster on “Interactive Tool for Cell Model Simulation” [poster pdf] and Thomas Hund on “Altered Calcium-Handling and Electrophysiological Remodeling in Cells from Infarcted Myocardium”. Dr. Rudy gave a talk on “Modeling the Electrophysiological Consequences of Sodium Channel Dysfunction” in the same meeting.
  
  
• Dr. Rudy was The Reynolds Visiting Professor at the Reynolds Center for Cardiovascular Research, Division of Cardiology, Johns Hopkins University . Dr. Rudy presented recent work on Electrocardiographic Imaging in humans.