Researcher Summary
Dr Zakkaroff is a researcher with experience in cardiovascular image analysis, medical image registration and visualisation. He received his BSc and MSc degrees in computer science from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and his PhD from the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. His current research interests are large scale physiological simulation, and high performance computing. Dr Zakkaroff is developing the Coupled Arterial Cells project. At its core, this project has a massively parallel, multi-scale framework for modelling paracrine signalling. The project focuses on the investigation of the relationship between micro-scale cellular dynamics and the resulting emergent macro-scale behaviour as it is exemplified by the growth of atherosclerotic plaques. This approach to the exploration of large-scale emergent behaviour is capable of providing invaluable insights into the onset of coronary heart disease. In silico simulations enable the rapid exploration and pruning of the parameter search space for the refinement and integration of micro-level models into biologically realistic macro-scale models. The in silico simulation provide the opportunity to perform physiological experiments which are impossible in the in vivo or in vitro settings.
