Eric A Sobie, PhD

Specific Research Interest:
Mechanisms underlying cardiac dysfunction and arrhythmias using physiological experiments coupled with mathematical modeling

Postdoctoral Fellows: Young-Seon Lee, Eva Polakova

Graduate and Medical Students: John Jones Molina, Megan Cummins, Ryan Devenyi, Pavan Dalal

Undergraduates and Visitors: Kathleen McGovern, Alessandro Giovannini, Allie Lopatkin

Research Personnel: Frank Fabris

The Sobie Laboratory combines mathematical modeling with state-of-the-art experimental techniques in order to improve our quantitative understanding of cardiac physiology.  We generate predictions using mathematical models, then test these predictions experimentally by measuring calcium and transmembrane voltage in heart cells.  This provides novel insight into the initiation of arrhythmias and dysfunction that occurs in disease states such as heart failure.  Specific research projects are described in more detail at our lab website.

 

Keywords: Biophysics, Calcium, Computer Simulation, Electrophysiology, Heart, Mathematical and Computational Biology, Systems Biology

Current Research Studies:
2010-2013: Novel computational approaches for understanding drug-induced arrhythmia. American Heart Association 10GRNT4170020.  The goal of this project is to use new computational methods to understand sources of inter-patient variability in arrhythmias caused by pharmacological agents.

2005-2014: Sarcoplasmic reticulum calcium leak and calcium instability in cardiac myocytes; National Institutes of Health R01 HL 076230; The goal of this project is to investigate, through experiments and simulation, sources of unstable, potentially arrhythmogenic calcium release in cardiac myocytes.

2007-2012:  Systems Biology Center in New York.  National Institutes of Health P50 GM071558-01; Dr. Sobie leads one of the projects in this multi-investigator grant.  We are developing methods for explicit multi-scale simulations of heart function.