Svetlana Komarova first started finding out bone as a postdoctoral fellow at NASA, the place her analysis was centered on the bone loss that occurs to astronauts throughout area flight. Now, with a long time of experience underneath her belt, she leads a lab that makes use of computational modelling to perceive the function of bone within the physique’s general health — together with throughout area flight, an space that also fascinates her to this present day.
Looking at a skeleton, you’ll have the phantasm that bone is one thing static and unchangeable. In an precise human physique, this couldn’t be farther from the reality, as Komarova’s analysis exhibits. Bone performs a task in quite a few organic processes from metabolism to calcium homeostasis (the method of how the physique retains calcium ranges secure, which regularly entails bones as storage vaults the place calcium may be deposited or withdrawn as wanted).
“One of our key areas of focus is to understand how these different functions can interact with each other and affect each other.”
One concern with finding out bone, Komarova explains, is that “it’s a very slow organ and it takes a long time to change.” Although the results of some processes or therapies may be seen inside days, many adjustments on the tissue degree can take months and even longer.
This is the place Komarova’s creation of digital twins is invaluable. The idea of digital twins originated within the discipline of engineering, Komarova says, and sometimes described an actual duplicate primarily based on a bodily machine. Within the context of her biomedical engineering analysis, it’s a bit completely different. Her digital twins are digital representations of a organic system, one thing rather more difficult to recreate exactly.
The digital twins, created by means of a posh course of utilizing mathematical modelling and pc instruments, are basically simulations of bone that behave precisely like common bone would. This permits researchers to manipulate the digital twins to acquire crucial insights into how varied processes, from illnesses to therapies, would possibly have an effect on a bone.
“Digital twinning allows you to build different scale models to compare how something looks at very early stages versus very late stages, exploring how the processes are connected and how they co-ordinate with each other.”
To assist her advance this work, Komarova has been named Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Digital Twins for Bone Health, becoming a member of 17 different U of A recipients who have been lauded for the innovative research they conduct as leaders in their fields (see beneath).
“My research is focused on bone physiology, and I see bone as an integrated organ,” says Komarova, who can also be chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. “It participates in many different functions of the body.”
Her lab undertakes each experimental and computational analysis, with every strategy informing the opposite. The experimental analysis, for instance, generates essential knowledge and insights that inform the fashions Komarova creates, whereas the fashions may also help check hypotheses and determine extra insights that enrich the experimental knowledge.
“The whole idea of how small changes lead to big-scale organ-related changes is where I see the digital twins that I develop really helping in understanding physiological questions.”
Her work on osteoporosis, a typical bone illness that impacts one in three women and one in five men over 50 worldwide, is main to AI instruments for analysis and remedy. “I do find that we’re underutilizing the information we have about osteoporosis, and some of the deterministic models we’ve developed in my lab would really work well with AI,” says Komarova. She additionally investigates uncommon bone illnesses, an space of curiosity she developed whereas working as a analysis scientist on the Shriners Hospital for Children Canada.
Her area flight analysis helps transfer towards a greater understanding of bone loss noticed in area flights, paving the best way for potential options permitting us to discover additional and additional out into the universe. “I’m a sci-fi fan. I believe in space exploration, so that’s an interesting one for me to continue advancing,” says Komarova.
As if that weren’t sufficient, Komarova spent 20 years of her profession at McGill University’s Faculty of Dental Medicine and Oral Health Sciences, so she additionally research tooth — one other sort of mineralized tissue — with the purpose of discovering solutions to points that have an effect on oral health.
New and renewed Canada Research Chairs at U of A
Komarova is amongst 18 new or renewed Canada Research Chairs on the U of A. The chairs acknowledge researchers who display excellence in a broad vary of fields throughout the health sciences, natural and applied sciences, and social sciences and humanities.
New chairs:
- Valerie Carson (Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation): Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Movement Behaviours and Child Health
- Sara Davison (Medicine & Dentistry): Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Kidney Supportive Care
- Yindi Jing (Engineering): Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Wireless Communications
- Padma Kaul (Medicine & Dentistry): Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Women and Children’s Cardio-Metabolic Health
- Lindsay LeBlanc (Science): Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Atomic Quantum Science and Technology
- Juan Pablo Yanez (Science): Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Astroparticle Physics
Renewed chairs:
- Yasmeen Abu-Laban (Arts): Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in The Politics of Citizenship and Human Rights
- David Brown (Arts): Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Energy Economics and Policy
- Stephanie Green (Science): Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Aquatic Global Change Ecology and Conservation
- Jesse Jackson (Medicine & Dentistry): Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Neural Circuits
- Glen Jickling (Medicine & Dentistry): Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Stroke Genomics and Immunobiology
- Shalene Jobin (Native Studies): Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Governance
- Linglong Kong (Science): Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Statistical Learning
- Vladimir Michaelis (Science): Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Magnetic Resonance of Advanced Materials
- Anna Taylor (Medicine & Dentistry): Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Pain and Addiction
- Sue Tsai (Medicine & Dentistry): Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Immune-Metabolic Interface in Health and Disease
- Joanne Weber (Education): Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Deaf Education