Vancouver was the scientific starting point of this Canadian trip: the World Congress of Biomechanics, a packed programme, and the chance to discuss our work with people approaching similar questions from very different directions. After the congress, I traded conference rooms for Banff and the Canadian Rockies.
Vancouver / research and conversations
I presented Graph-Derived Mechanochemical Simulations Capture Patient-Specific and Population-Level Variability in Atherosclerosis Progression. The work connects clinical information, mechanical simulations and biological modelling to investigate how atherosclerosis can evolve differently across patients, while also capturing patterns at the population level.
This is an early step in VISTA, Michele Marino’s ERC project, which is now getting underway. Michele also presented related work on the graph-informed mechanochemical framework and its rule-based description of vascular inflammation. Presenting these first developments at the same congress gave us an opportunity to discuss both the modelling foundations and their application to patient-specific data.
The technical discussions were one of the most exciting parts of the week: advanced research, different modelling perspectives, and questions that carry on after a presentation has finished. Explaining the work to other researchers also helps clarify which assumptions need more attention and where the next developments should go.
I was also named runner-up for the ESB Student Award, as announced by the European Society of Biomechanics. It was a rewarding recognition at this early stage of the research.
From Vancouver to the Rockies
After Vancouver came Banff and a very different scale of scenery. The photographs take the story from the city and its surroundings into the mountains, and further north along the Rockies. Keeping them together makes room for that part of the trip alongside the science.
A photographic route
Explore the map or open a photograph below. The map uses the locations recorded by the camera. Its dashed line connects dated photographs in sequence, while the gaps between them remain part of the journey rather than a reconstructed driving route.
Loading the photographic route…
Travelling for research brought these two parts together: a week of presentations and conversations, followed by time to look around. Vancouver and the Rockies belong to the same trip, with a welcome change of pace between them.