IBME doctoral student Alexander Sharp wins Young Investigator Award at Computing in Cardiology Conference 2025
Alexander Sharp, a doctoral student at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBME), has been awarded the prestigious Rosanna Degani Young Investigator Award at the Computing in Cardiology (CinC) conference 2025, held in São Paulo, Brazil. CinC is an international scientific conference that brings together engineers, clinicians, and scientists to present and discuss cutting-edge research in cardiovascular computing, modelling, and data analysis. The award recognises outstanding early-career contributions to the field of computational cardiology.
Alex’s research focuses on the development of a Statistical Shape and Appearance Model of the left atrium, which jointly captures anatomical structure and conduction velocity in patients with persistent atrial fibrillation (AF). His work demonstrates how local geometry relates to electrophysiological properties and enables the generation of physiologically faithful synthetic atria for in-silico studies.
This research has the potential to enhance the realism and predictive power of computational cardiac models, which are increasingly used to simulate arrhythmia mechanisms and guide treatment strategies. By enabling more accurate virtual testing environments, Alex’s research supports the development of safer, more effective therapies for AF, one of the most common and complex cardiac arrhythmias. These contributions align with CinC’s mission to foster interdisciplinary research that translates computational advances into clinical benefit.
The work forms a central component of a Heart Research UK-funded Novel & Emerging Technologies (NET) Grant, which is based on Alex’s DPhil research, supervised by Dr Abhirup Banerjee, Royal Society University Research Fellow and Group Leader of the IBME’s MultiMeDIA (Multimodal Medical Data Integration & Analysis) Lab, and Professor Tim Betts, Consultant Cardiologist at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Speaking about his experience at the conference, Alex shared:
“I’m thrilled to have received the Young Investigator Award at CinC 2025. It was a fantastic conference filled with inspiring discussions. I’m especially grateful to my supervisors for their guidance and support throughout my DPhil journey.”
This achievement follows on from last year’s success, where IBME DPhil student Thalia Seale, also supervised by Dr Abhirup Banerjee, won the Bill and Gary Sanders Poster Award at CinC 2024, reflecting the MultiMeDIA lab’s continued strength in advancing cardiac research.
For more details about the research of Alex, Dr Abhirup Banerjee, and the MultiMeDIA Lab, please check: https://eng.ox.ac.uk/multimedia.