The CinC Karlsruhe Simulation Award (KSA, ex MSA)

About the Award

– What’s it all about?

During the 2018 edition of CinC, the Sunday Symposium was dedicated to a hands-on experience with 4 different simulation packages (CircAdapt, ECGSim, Myokit and SCIRun) running on 250 computers of Maastricht University. This event was well attended and greatly appreciated by a large number of participants, reflecting the increasing interest in mechanistic models and simulation within the CinC community. In order to stimulate this development and potentially attract new participants working on this topic to the CinC meeting, the organizers of CinC 2018 have established and funded a new Maastricht Simulation Award (MSA).

As of 2025, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) toook over and will ensure the continued organization of this award, maintaining the same level of quality and commitment to promote excellence in the field of cardiac simulation.

– The Aim of the Award

The goal of this award (and its $500 prize) is to recognize the best submission to the conference each year on the topic of cardiovascular simulations.

Eligibility

– Who may submit?

Submission for the KSA is open to all CinC participants. We especially encourage participation from first-time attendees, authors from underrepresented countries and/or early-career investigators

– Conflicts with other awards

There is no conflict between the KSA and other awards. Authors may submit to the KSA and other awards at CinC for which they qualify

– Statement of participation

Together with the 4-pages submission, a statement is required from the corresponding author to confirm the willingness by at least one team member to participate to the CinC conference. Moreover, a statement is required indicating that the submission is based on original research that has not been yet published or presented in international conferences at the date of submission.

– Submission of Results that are the are Part of a Team Effort

The KSA is a shared award for all members of the group of authors who have submitted the paper.

Entering the KSA Competition

– First steps

Consult the Call for Papers for this year’s CinC conference to verify the abstract deadline, usually 15 April.

– Submitting the abstract and four-page paper

Submitting a properly formatted abstract and four-page paper is easy and usually trouble-free, but avoid missing the deadline because of unfamiliarity with the formatting requirements or the submission process. Since you may revise your submissions at any time before the abstract deadline, test the process by submitting early drafts of your conference program abstract and of your full paper to avoid last-minute surprises.

Abstract : To enable electronic processing, the abstract to be included in the conference program must be submitted via the CinC abstract and paper collection site according to a predefined format. For details, see these instructions for preparing and submitting CinC abstracts.

Full paper : KSA applicants must submit a full paper in the format as required for the conference proceedings. This includes a short abstract. For details, see these instructions for preparing and submitting CinC papers.

The Selection Process

– Selection of KSA winner

The KSA submissions will go through an initial grading as part of the track-based review process based on the criteria originality, impact and quality of the results. Submissions that receive a high enough score then receive a second review by the KSA Review Panel who will make a final decision. Criteria considered in this second phase include innovative methodology, value for the community, reproducibility and open source code.

– Presentation of the paper

The winner of the KSA paper will present the paper at a time and session determined by the Program Chair of the CinC.

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2025 Winner :

Gustavo Novaes – Stochastic Modeling of Calcium Release Units Reveals a Strong Dependence of Calcium Release Variability on Cluster Size.

2024 Winner :

Jorge Sánchez – A Model Population-Based Approach to Enhance the Detection of Premature Ventricular Contraction of ECGI.

2023 Winner :

Tobias Gerach – Whole Heart Simulation of Severe Aortic Stenosis Using a Lumped Parameter Model of Heart Valve Dynamics.

2022 Winner :

Rosie Barrows – The Effect of Heart Rate and Atrial Contraction on Left Ventricular Function.

2021 Winner :

Chiara Bartolucci – A Novel Computational Model of Pacemaker Activity in the Mouse Atrioventricular Node Cell.

2020 Winner :

Konstantinos Mountris – Next-generation in-silico Cardiac Electrophysiology through Immersed Grid Meshfree Modelling. Application to Simulation of Myocardial Infarction.

2019 Winner :

Violeta Monasterio – Influence of the Stimulation Current on the Differences between Cell and Tissue Electrophysiological Simulations.