The BioDynaMo consortium welcomes its new technical coordinator, Vasileios Vavourakis from the University of Cyprus.
On 20 September 2022, the consortium Board of BioDynaMo voted to transfer the technical coordination of the project to Assistant Professor Vasileios Vavourakis at the University of Cyprus. Until now, the technical development has been coordinated from CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics.
untitled image by SPRKLG, licensed under CC BY 2.0
The project was launched back in 2015 as part of CERN openlab’s work with Intel on code modernization, and received support from the CERN budget for knowledge transfer to medical applications. Its primary goal was to accelerate biological simulation. Agent-based simulation is central to a wide range of research fields, from biology to finance and social sciences. Today, BioDynaMo is a powerful software platform for creating, running and visualising all kinds of 3D agent-based simulations.
“The original simulator we used was Cortex3D, but we soon decided to join forces to design and develop a truly cutting-edge agent-based simulation suite,” says Roman Bauer, the collaboration spokesperson from the University of Surrey, leading representative and spokesperson for the BioDynaMo consortium. Last year, BioDynaMo released v1.0 of its platform, with important updates having also been made in 2022. “Fons Rademakers and his colleagues at CERN have done an excellent job guiding the development of this platform, but it’s now time to focus on the community of users and to build funnelling and community-management practices around the technical tools,” explains Bauer. “It therefore feels like a good moment to transition to a new coordinator; Vasileios (University of Cyprus) is the right partner to take on the challenge!”
BioDynaMo has already been adopted by researchers from a range of fields. In this new project phase, the consortium will strive to lower the barriers to entry for new users and contributors alike. The consortium will also work to enhance user experience and further improve the code, with the aim of offering even more modularity and flexibility to end users from a diverse range of disciplines.
“We are proud to have incubated this successful project,” says Alberto Di Meglio, head of CERN openlab. “With BioDynaMo having reached a sufficient level of technical maturity, the time is now right for the consortium to explore new applications in and partnerships with other research fields, ensuring maximum impact for society.”
The goal is to deliver on the mission that first brought together the Consortium members (CERN, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, University of Surrey, GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, University of Cyprus, SCImPULSE Foundation), namely to play a key role in unlocking exciting new avenues of research and pushing against the limits of human knowledge and technical ability.
“I am very honoured by the consortium board’s decision to entrust me with the role of technical coordinator of BioDynaMo,” says Vavourakis. “I will preserve the great investment that has been made until now, guaranteeing the high-quality code base that is fundamental for reproducible and sustainable research”.
“I commit to work with all consortium members and to foster links with both the scientific community and industry,” adds Vavourakis. “We will reinforce the welcoming and educational environment around the technical work on BioDynaMo, and we will actively promote participation in this venture, with the goal of going even further beyond the state-of-the-art that the consortium has already achieved.”
Stay tuned to BioDynaMo’s website, Twitter, and LinkedIn for exciting new opportunities for collaboration, as well as new outreach initiatives. We welcome those interested in joining the BioDynaMo project.
“The original simulator we used was Cortex3D, but we soon decided to join forces to design and develop a truly cutting-edge agent-based simulation suite,” says Roman Bauer, the collaboration spokesperson from the University of Surrey, leading representative and spokesperson for the BioDynaMo consortium. Last year, BioDynaMo released v1.0 of its platform, with important updates having also been made in 2022. “Fons Rademakers and his colleagues at CERN have done an excellent job guiding the development of this platform, but it’s now time to focus on the community of users and to build funnelling and community-management practices around the technical tools,” explains Bauer. “It therefore feels like a good moment to transition to a new coordinator; Vasileios (University of Cyprus) is the right partner to take on the challenge!”
BioDynaMo has already been adopted by researchers from a range of fields. In this new project phase, the consortium will strive to lower the barriers to entry for new users and contributors alike. The consortium will also work to enhance user experience and further improve the code, with the aim of offering even more modularity and flexibility to end users from a diverse range of disciplines.
“We are proud to have incubated this successful project,” says Alberto Di Meglio, head of CERN openlab. “With BioDynaMo having reached a sufficient level of technical maturity, the time is now right for the consortium to explore new applications in and partnerships with other research fields, ensuring maximum impact for society.”
The goal is to deliver on the mission that first brought together the Consortium members (CERN, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, University of Surrey, GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, University of Cyprus, SCImPULSE Foundation), namely to play a key role in unlocking exciting new avenues of research and pushing against the limits of human knowledge and technical ability.
“I am very honoured by the consortium board’s decision to entrust me with the role of technical coordinator of BioDynaMo,” says Vavourakis. “I will preserve the great investment that has been made until now, guaranteeing the high-quality code base that is fundamental for reproducible and sustainable research”.
“I commit to work with all consortium members and to foster links with both the scientific community and industry,” adds Vavourakis. “We will reinforce the welcoming and educational environment around the technical work on BioDynaMo, and we will actively promote participation in this venture, with the goal of going even further beyond the state-of-the-art that the consortium has already achieved.”
Stay tuned to BioDynaMo’s website, Twitter, and LinkedIn for exciting new opportunities for collaboration, as well as new outreach initiatives. We welcome those interested in joining the BioDynaMo project.
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