Dr. Milica Nikolic
Alumni
Project description
Regenerative medicine is the branch of medicine that is developing intensively during the recent years, since it can be used for curing of diseases by improvement and regeneration of damaged cells, tissues and organs. Researchers are working on generation of the cells, tissues platforms and artificial organs that can be used for experiments. Development of computational models can greatly improve research. Computational models are initially developed to replicate behaviour and observations from experiments (validation of numerical solutions). They can be used upon validation to get more results, without performing the experiments, by changing boundary conditions, material properties or external influences. Analysis of the obtained numerical results can drive the next experiments in direction of more desirable results. Thus, the main goals of using computational models are reducing the number of performed experiments and achieve research results faster, since less time will be consumed if some experiments are replaced with numerical calculations. Finally, it can have greater value in term of ethical use of cells/tissues. My postdoctoral research will be dedicated to development of computational models applied in regenerative medicine, starting with development of computational model for cardiac microtissue in Abaqus using finite element method that will be able to replicate behaviour of cardiac myocytes and surrounding structures – uniaxial and biaxial alignment. I will explore the other possibilities to include realistic geometry into the model. Part of my work will be related to development of kidney computational models. I will work on development of enabling technology platform as well.