Growing up, the assistant professor of bioengineering loved playing cards with his family and named his UW research laboratory — the Cardiac Systems Simulation (CardSS) Lab — in part to honor the pastime. But a more surprising connection between family and research was still to come.
“I don’t know how many people in my line of work have the opportunity for their research to manifest in front of their eyes, in a loved one no less,” Boyle says. “It’s been surreal and humbling.”
In the CardSS Lab, Boyle’s team models heart rhythm disorders to help doctors better understand and predict when patients may be at risk of arrhythmia, cardiac arrest and stroke. Central to their work is atrial fibrillation (A-fib), a type of arrhythmia that’s very common — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 12.1 million people in the U.S. will have A-fib by 2030 — yet difficult to detect.
