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PhD PROJECT（博士生课题） Topic: Development of a multi-scale mechanobiological modelling framework: application to vascular tissue engineering and vascular disease evolution 题目：多尺度力学生物学模拟平台：应用于血管组织工程学和血管疾病的发展 Principal Supervisor （主要导师）: Name: Dr Paul Watton Email: paulwatton@ Department of Computer Science and INSIGNEO Institute for In Silico Medicine University of Sheffield, Sheffield UK 英国谢菲尔德大学 计算科学系和INSIGNEO模拟医学研究所 Description of proposed project: Computational models of vascular mechanobiology have the potential to provide fundamental insight into disease processes, guide diagnostic decisions and simulate the consequences of the interaction of interventional devices with the vessel wall. However, whilst models of vascular solid and fluid mechanics have become increasingly sophisticated, the vascular mechanobiology is generally represented with a phenomenological approach. Consequently, the insight such models can provide and their potential application remains limited. Hence, there is a pressing need to develop improved models of the vascular mechanobiology. The objective of this PhD is to develop a novel multi-scale vascular mechanobiology modelling framework (VMMF), validate the VMMF with an in vitro model and then apply it to model a clinical problem. The project will extend a phenomenological VMMF of Dr Watton’s which incorporates: a detailed microstructural model of the arterial wall; a computational framework which quantifies the mechanical stimuli acting on the vascular cells; phenomenological algorithms for the interaction between the mechanical stimuli that act on the vascular cells and the growth, remodelling and damage of the tissue constituents. The research will have three stages: (i) to integrate explicit models of cellular biology into Watton’s model, e.g. incorporating (existing) agent based models to represent the behaviour of vascular cells and/or (known) signalling pathways network models; (ii) apply the mo