Eirini’s presentation was titled “Digital Twins: Treating patients based on computer models,” where she condensed the research she has been focusing on for seven years into thirteen fun and interesting minutes.
A computational biologist with a knack for explaining complex research simply
Eirini Tsirvouli is a computational biologist and researcher in the DLN project DrugLogics. She works with logical modeling of various biological systems in normal and diseased human cells. At this event, she explained the concept of digital twins, and how this virtual model of a patient in the future can be used to capture the patient’s unique biological and health information. When we have this information, we can simulate how the patient’s body will interact with different treatments. That way we can predict effectiveness and potential side effects and design tailormade treatment plans for the patient.
Making a model of a patient is a bit like mapping a city
Eirini explained how making a model of a patient is a bit like mapping a city. Each person is unique, and so is the disease and how they respond to drugs. She showed a fun presentation that illustrated this. The audience followed along and asked several intrepid questions afterwards—it seemed like they understood Eirini well and thus were able to engage in dialogue with her on this topic that is actually very complex.
Digital twins for the win!
In the future, Digital twins can be an important part of our efforts to better understand diseases, find what makes each patient unique, help us test a lot of scenarios, and test them quickly, and thus make more precise treatment decisions.
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What’s the point of National Science Week?
The goal of research is to be open, accessible, and responsible. Popular science communication plays a crucial role in engaging society. The Centre for Digital Life Norway cooperates with several UiO faculties and the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology (Teknisk museum) to bring research to the public during Forskningsdagene/the National Science Week in Norway. Forskningsdagene takes place every autumn and is a nationwide event to make science and research available to the public.