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Foeschungszentrum Jülich - Research in Jülich 1_2013

20 From Vessels to a Network Dmitry A. Fedosov received a Sofja Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The mathematician is using the award of € 1.3 million to set up a working group to simulate the blood flow in healthy and cancerous tissue. This knowledge will specifically improve tumour therapy. In order to simulate blood flow in one cublic millimetre of tissue, researchers have to take into consideration many millions of blood cells, of which about five million are red blood cells. T he move to Jülich marks a new chapter in Dmitry A. Fedosov’s ca- reer. The thirty-year-old mathema- tician, who studied in Novosibirsk and took his PhD in the USA, has been given an opportunity at the Institute of Com- plex Systems that few scientists of his age enjoy. Since September 2012 he has headed a working group and has a say in where their research is going. ceivable that we could ever simulate the entire human microcirculation,” says Fe- dosov. CANCER DRUGS Nevertheless, the Russian scientist still considers it possible to reproduce the network of the blood flow. This would be a milestone in simulation and also the key to further knowledge. In Fedosov’s goal is to simulate the microcirculation of blood in both healthy tissue and in tumours. The microcircula- tion is a network of ultrafine blood ves- sels such as capillaries, many times thin- ner than a single hair, that spread through body tissue. “If all the fine blood vessels in the human body were placed end to end they would pass around the Earth more than twice. It is hardly con- Research in Jülich 1|2013

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