Alex Quinn
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Alex
Quinn
Wolfson Building, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QD |
Biography
Originally interested in the Physical Sciences and Mathematics, as an undergraduate at McGill University I enrolled for a Joint Major programme in Physiology and Physics, where I became particularly fascinated by the powerful influence that mechanical effects can have on biological function. I applied this interest to the study of white blood cell adhesion, in the laboratory of Prof Harry Goldsmith in the Department of Physiology at the Montreal General Hospital Research Institute, ultimately identifying an important role of bond loading rate. From this experience, I decided that the immerging field of Biomedical Engineering was where best to continue my development. I did my graduate work at Columbia University in New York, receiving my PhD in Biomedical Engineering with Dr. Jeffrey Holmes and the Cardiac Biomechanics Group, while working in the laboratory of Dr. Henry Spotnitz in the Department of Surgery. The bulk of this involved clinical and translational studies focused on cardiac mechanical function at the whole animal and patient levels. My main objective was to develop techniques for biventricular pacing to treat acute cardiac dysfunction, where we demonstrated that optimised pacing can improve cardiac function, both in animal models of acute dysfunction and in patients after heart surgery, and is further being investigated as part of an ongoing clinical trial (Biventricular Pacing After Cardiac Surgery, BiPACS). My current postdoctoral training involves more fundamental basic research studies of cardiac mechano-electric interaction in health and disease. This is focused around two projects, one investigating the effects of ischemia on cardiac mechano-electric coupling and its role in sustained cardiac arrhythmias, and the other focused on the importance of regional versus global mechanical effects on heart rhythm. Both of these projects are taking a multi-scale, multi-modal approach, with direct iteration between experimentation and advanced computational modelling. I am working with Dr. Peter Kohl and the Cardiac Biophysics and Systems Biology Group in the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London and Dr. Blanca Rodriguez and the Computational Biology Group in the Computing Laboratory at Oxford University. Thus far, we have shown that local mechanically-induced excitation is the initiator of electrophysiological responses with local deformation, which can result in deadly cardiac arrhythmias. For more details about my research, please see: http://www.physiol.ox.ac.uk/~dpag0181/
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