CPA - Postdoc Launch Seminar 2026 - I

Dear Postdocs,

I'm very happy to announce that we're restarting our usual interdisciplinary postdoc seminar series this Friday lunchtime! We'll have exciting talks from Dr. Kevin Shu (PMA) and Dr. Rashid Alavi (MedE), whose talk titles and abstracts can be found below.

The Joys of Convex Optimisation

Dr. Kevin Shu, PMA

      In the mathematical analysis of optimization problems, convex optimization plays a special role as it is both broadly applicable and also possible to rigorously analyze. We will discuss what convex optimization is and how it can be used from the viewpoint of fixed point iteration. In particular, we will see how we can use convex optimization to design novel algorithms with optimal performance guarantees. We will also discuss a theoretical framework for explaining why convex optimization has such wide applicability, even to problems which do not seem to be convex in nature.

Can Smart Wearables Detect Silent Heart Attacks? Novel Frameworks through Cardiovascular Fluid Dynamics and Electrocardiography

Dr. Rashid Alavi, MedE

      Silent heart attacks remain among the most challenging diagnostic problems because they can occur in the absence of classical chest pain, obvious electrocardiogram abnormalities, or even both. Such absences happen in nearly half of heart attacks and can make early diagnosis extremely difficult. In this talk, I will discuss our efforts to develop noninvasive and low-cost approaches for revealing hidden signatures of silent heart attacks.


      
I will present our recent experimental and analytical studies, including the development of new theoretical and analytical frameworks, an in-vitro cardiovascular fluid-dynamic simulator for studying the mechanical signatures of heart attacks, and the in-vivo animal heart attack study investigating hemodynamic and electrophysiological mechanisms. I will further present our physics-based machine learning models for heart attack diagnostics, together with translation studies toward clinical practice. I will also present our recently developed ECG time–frequency "eyeball" framework and its contributions to revealing hidden heart attack signatures from brief single-lead ECG recordings. Together, these approaches aim to provide interpretable and early diagnostics of silent heart attacks via emerging smart wearable devices.

As always - FREE lunch and beverages will be available at the talk. To make sure we can order enough food, please RSVP here beforehand: https://forms.gle/Ma72H7SWz6zXDtwZ9.