Doctor Kottlarz!

Congratulations to dr. Inga Kottlarz on successfully defending her PhD thesis on the 18th of May earlier this year, not to forget earning the distinction summa cum laude! Her dissertation, entitled “In silico parameter estimation of cardiac tissue models”, focused on new mathematical and computational approaches to better understand atrial fibrillation. We warmly congratulate Inga on this exceptional achievement and wish her all the best for what comes next!

Atrial fibrillation is a common heart rhythm disorder that is linked to serious complications such as stroke and heart failure. In her thesis, Inga approached the problem from two sides: she developed a mathematical model to better understand the electrical behavior of cardiac cells grown from human stem cells, and she introduced a new data assimilation method to learn about cardiac tissue from limited and noisy measurements. This method can help reconstruct properties that are difficult to measure directly, such as the orientation of cardiac muscle fibres and how easily electrical signals travel in different directions. Together, these approaches show how mathematical modelling can help connect experimental observations with otherwise hidden properties of cardiac cells and tissue.