Ultrasound is widely used as a noninvasive method in therapeutic and diagnostic applications. These can be further optimized by computational approaches, as they allow for controlled testing and rational optimization of the ultrasound parameters, such as frequency and amplitude. Usually, continuum numerical methods are used to simulate ultrasound propagating through different tissue types. In contrast, ultrasound simulations using particle description are less common, as the implementation is challenging.

In this talk, Prof. Praprotnik will present a dissipative particle dynamics model for performing ultrasound simulations in liquid water. The effects of frequency and thermostat parameters will be discussed.  The results of our particle-based ultrasound simulations show that our approach is capable of reproducing the fluctuating hydrodynamics description of ultrasound in the continuum limit. The present study paves the way for development and optimization of a virtual ultrasound machine for large-scale biomolecular simulations.

Matej Praprotnik is Head of the Laboratory for Molecular Modeling at the National Institute of Chemistry and Professor of Physics at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana. He studied Physics and received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Ljubljana. He carried out postdoctoral research in the Theory group at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, Germany.

He has held visiting scientist positions at the Computational Science & Engineering Laboratory (ETH Zurich), the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications (University of Minnesota), the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (University of California, Santa Barbara), and the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics China (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing). Matej is former Chair of the PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) Scientific Steering Committee.

He served as President of the Slovenian Biophysical Society from 2015 to 2019. He also serves as a council member of CECAM (Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique et Moléculaire) and as a scientific council member of the National Institute of Chemistry. He is recipient of the ERC Advanced Grant 2019 by the European Research Council.

His research is focused on computer simulations of soft and biological matter. The focus is on developing and combining innovative computational and theoretical methods augmented by machine learning techniques to study complex molecular systems.