Name: Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation Young Investigator Competition

Location and place :AAMI's Annual Conference & Expo in Baltimore,MD

date: June 10th 2001

FROM AAMI WEBDSITE: http://www.aami.org/news/2001/071901.yic.html

Florida Biomed Student Wins Young Investigator Competition

SURESH A. ATAPATTU, a 32 year-old Sri Lankan American, is the winner of this year's Young Investigator Competition for his presentation entitled, "A Heart Rate Variability Acquisition and Analysis System."

Atapattu's research won him $1,500 and an engraved plaque presented to him during AAMI's Annual Conference & Expo in Baltimore in June.

"It has been a great honor to win the award," said Atapattu, a pre-doctoral biomedical engineering student at the University of Miami and astronomy lecturer at the Buehler Planetarium in Davie, Florida. "I am indebted to my professors, Dr. Raul D. Mitrani and Dr. Peter P. Tarjan, who have given me the academic freedom to pursue my ideas within the framework of our overall research plan."

Atapattu was among three semi-finalists who presented their work at AAMI's conference. The other two were Janaka P. Wansapura, a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University, who presented his research entitled, "Non-Invasive Thermometry During MR Guided Prostate Cryo-Surgery"; and Yan Sun, a PhD candidate at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, who presented her research entitled, "A Novel Intelligent ECG Signal Processor for Arrhythmia Recognition Using Advanced Signal Processing and Pattern Recognition Techniques."

The annual competition provides opportunities for students involved in basic and applied research in the biomedical engineering and clinical engineering management fields to communicate their ideas and findings to others. The award is sponsored through a grant from the Whittaker Foundation.