Posts

To know what we know: from the science of emergence, to BioDynaMo

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   NetBioMed , a satellite of the NetSci conference , in their own words brings together researchers on Machine Learning, Digital Twins and Complex Systems towards solving problems in biology and medicine . On June the 2nd 2025  Dr Marco Manca  (President of SCImPULSE Foundation ) has joined friends and colleagues from around the world to discuss the epistemology of life sciences. In an intense half an hour talk, Dr Manca has lead the audience through a brief history of delusions in medical knowledge, to immediately focus on the processes and pitfalls of building human knowledge, the impact of assumptions (dscussing the case of ergodicity assumptions) and models on measurements (and thus, on data). He discussed the pros and cons of machine learning and the limitations of the aspiration to extract "objective knowledge" from data, or even dependable knowledge, because of the very founding principles on which ML as we have it today works. He then mo...

BioDynaMo @ Foresight Institute

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 Our spokesperson  Dr Bauer 's research focusses on the computational modelling and analysis of biological dynamics, in particular those of the brain. His highly interdisciplinary research involves modern computing approaches, biological expertise, innovative machine learning methods and IT- related collaboration, as we know. As you probably remember, Dr Bauer has been a 2024 Fellow of the Foresight Institute  and thus, he has had the opportunity to share his reflections about computational biology with a wider audience of brilliant people. Here we share two of his recent interviews/lectures, of course on topics we hold very dear. 1) Computational Modeling in Biomedicine: With the Eggs in Multiple Baskets Abstract :  Computational modeling is one of the pillars of the scientific method. Unsurprisingly, it has also become paramount for biomedical research when it entails various data modalities and numerous biological, physical and chemical processes. Moreover, t...

BioDynaMo in 2024 - End of the year remarks, and Holidays greetings

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Dear all,  as we are approaching the end of 2024, we would like to take a moment to reflect on our collaborative achievements within the BioDynaMo community. It has been a year marked by innovation, resilience, and shared commitment to advancing our understanding of various biological systems through innovative computational modelling. This year, the consortium had several important successes. We would like to specifically mention/highlight: The paper presenting BioDynaMo’s application to cancer treatment. Radiation-induced fibrosis is a major risk factor in radiotherapy for lung cancer patients. BioDynaMo members including our Nicolo as first author published in the very prestigious Nature Communications Medicine journal, showing how BioDynaMo can be used to simulate the impact of radiation on the lung on a single cell level. Such modelling can be used to improve radiotherapy: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-024-00442-w Also in the domain of oncology, a study leve...

Modelling lung cells to personalize radiotherapy (with BioDynaMo) among the Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year in physics for 2024!

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 Last December the 12th Physics World has delighted announced its Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year for 2024, which includes research in nuclear and medical physics, quantum computing, lasers, antimatter and (of course ^_^) BioDynaMo . The Top Ten is the shortlist for the Physics World Breakthrough of the Year, which will be revealed on Thursday 19 December. PhysicsWorld editorial team has looked back at all the scientific discoveries reported on since 1 January and has picked 10 they judge are the most important. In addition to being reported in Physics World in 2024, the breakthroughs must meet the following criteria:  Significant advance in knowledge or understanding Importance of work for scientific progress and/or development of real-world applications Of general interest to Physics World readers  You can listen to the editors making their case for the research in the Top10 in this podcast What do they say about the BioDynaMo research they selected: <<Modelling...

Congratulations Lukas Breitwieser for successfully defending your PhD

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 On Monday, November 11, 2024, Lukas successfully defended his thesis work, “ Design and Analysis of an Extreme-Scale, High-Performance, and Modular Agent-Based Simulation Platform ” 👏 The core contributions of Lukas’s thesis work are: BioDynaMo significantly reduces the simulation runtime, enabling larger and more complex simulations, faster iterative development, and more extensive parameter exploration. Specifically, BioDynaMo can: simulate 500 billion agents (a 84x improvement over the state-of-the-art), scale to 84’096 CPU cores, significantly reduce the simulation time (e.g., BioDynaMo simulates an iteration of 800 million agents in 0.6 s instead of 5 s), and significantly increases the visualization performance by 39x.

Join our collaboration and one of the most exciting research labs in the world!

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 Not long ago we had advertised a vacancy at CERN to join our collaboration -> link Despite receiving a great response, we failed to meet the right profile (all had great talents, but the acceptable experience accumulated after University degree is a hard requirement), and we are does readvertising the vacancy! Are you a Computer Scientist (or from a related field) and have obtained either: your Master's degree with 2 to 6 years of post-graduation professional experience; or your PhD with no more than 3 years of post-graduation professional experience? Would you say you honed excellent skills in the C++ programming language and have a keen interest in agent-based simulations solutions and computational biology? Are you a national of a CERN Member or Associate Member State? We are looking for you! Apply to join our team and gain experience in one of the most thriving and exciting laboratories in the world!!! https://jobs.smartrecruiters.com/CERN/743999964172854-agent-based-digita...

Agent-based modeling in cancer biomedicine: applications and tools for calibration and validation

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 We are very excited to announce that our scientific dream team ( Nicolò Cogno , Cristian Axenie ,  Roman Bauer , and Vasileios Vavourakis ) have published a masterpiece review on the topic of " Agent-based modeling in cancer biomedicine: applications and tools for calibration and validation "  They focused on collecting and organizing relevant literature exploring strategies to leverage high-fidelity simulations of multi-scale, or multi-level, cancer models with a focus on verification approached as simulation calibration. The review then culminates in an outline of modern approaches for agent-based models’ validation providing an ambitious outlook toward rigorous and reliable calibration. Learn more by downloading the full text here