The consortium includes the following partners: Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany, Martin Kronbichler), Università di Pisa (Italy, Luca Heltai), Università degli Studi di Brescia (Italy, Alberto Salvadori), Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften represented by the Leibniz Supercomputing Center (Germany, Gerald Mathias), Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati di Trieste (Italy, Andrea Cangiani), Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata (Italy, Salvatore Filippone), Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse (France, Alfredo Buttari), Technische Universität München (Germany, Wolfgang A. Wall), Politecnico di Milano (Italy, Luca Dede), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany, Paul Steinmann), Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V. represented by the Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics (Germany, Alfonso Caiazzo), Exact Lab SRL (Italy, Francesco De Giorgi, SMT partner) and Virtual Physiological Human Institute for Integrative Biomedical Research VZW (Belgium, Liesbet Geris).
EU project
dealiiX
Researchers want to simulate biological processes in individual organs in detail in order to better understand and treat diseases.
The body reacts in a complex way to changes that are triggered by illnesses, for example. Being able to predict such reactions would make it easier to treat patients individually. International researchers in the EU project"dealii-X: An exascale framework for digital twins of the human body" want to make this prediction possible. The project is coordinated by Prof. Dr. Martin Kronbichler, Head of the Applied Numerics working group at Ruhr University Bochum.
Tools for numerical simulation
The aim is to develop powerful and scalable tools for the numerical simulation of physical-biological processes in organs of the human body. The participating research groups are focusing on various organs, including the heart and the brain in addition to the lungs. Our aim is to map the complex mechanics of various diseases, such as the transmission of electrical currents in the brain or the flow of various fluids through the vascular system.
The project is based on the innovative components of the mathematical software deal.II, a library in the programming language C++, which offers a range of mathematical tools for solving biomechanical models described by partial differential equations. The computational effort for the simulations is considerable. The consortium has access to various mainframe computers, including the Exascale computers, which are currently being set up at various locations, including Jülich, with EU funding.
