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PA EPA SCIENTIST WINS AWARD FOR COMPUTER SIMULATION OF AIR POLLUTION EFFECTS ON HUMAN LUNGS

Release Date: 07/18/97
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FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 18, 1997
EPA SCIENTIST WINS AWARD FOR COMPUTER SIMULATION OF
AIR POLLUTION EFFECTS ON HUMAN LUNGS

Dr. Ted Martonen, a research physicist with EPA’s National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory in Research Triangle Park, N.C., has won the 1997 Computerworld Smithsonian Award for Medicine for his Supercomputer Simulations of the Human Lung. Dr. Martonen’s project involves the development of models that visualize the movement of inhaled substances through the lungs, allowing toxicologists to accurately assess the negative effects of air pollution on the lungs. The simulated respiratory tract consists of over 20 million airways; it takes an extremely fast and powerful computer to accurately reproduce air motion in three dimensions. Once the mapping of the lung airways was completed, a coding system was used to describe features of healthy human lungs and to simulate lung cancer and other airway diseases, as well as the measurement of how drugs and particles are deposited in the lungs. Additional information is available on the Internet at https://www.epa.gov/nesc/20_projects.

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