Dr. Fijoy Vadakkumpadan, Assistant Research Professor of the Institute for Computational Medicine and Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, has been awarded the American Heart Association National Scientist Development Grant. This grant supports highly promising beginning scientists in their progress toward independence by encouraging and adequately funding research projects that can bridge the gap between completion of research training and readiness for successful competition as an independent investigator. The award provides $77,000 per year for four years.

The goal of Dr. Vadakkumpadan’s project is to uncover novel predictors of sudden cardiac death risk, by means of computational simulations of cardiac electrophysiology and statistical analysis of the heart shape. This project seeks to develop better alternatives to left-ventricular ejection fraction, the metric currently used in the clinic to predict sudden cardiac death risk, because this metric has low specificity and leads to implantations of cardioverter defibrillator devices in patients who do not benefit from these devices. Dr. Vadakkumpadan receives support from Dr. Natalia Trayanova’s research team on the computational cardiac electrophysiology aspects of this research. He also collaborates with clinical cardiologist Dr. Katherine Wu and statistical shape analysis expert Dr. Laurent Younes on this project.

Congratulations Fijoy!