Parallels between pumping blood, oil focus of conference

ExxonMobil, Methodist DeBakey Heart Center, UH team up to explore shared technologies

HOUSTON, Nov. 12, 2007 – Much like moving oil through a pipeline, the heart must pump blood through the body. In a collaborative effort between Houston’s largest industries, an event bringing together petroleum, medical and imaging experts will explore potential crossover ideas and extract shared technologies useful to each industry.

Sponsored by ExxonMobil, the Methodist DeBakey Heart Center of The Methodist Hospital and the University of Houston, the “Pumps & Pipes I” conference will be held at UH’s Texas Learning and Computation Center from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday, Nov. 12 in 232 Philip G. Hoffman Hall.

The presentations and discussions will explore issues common to the medical and oil and gas industries, discussing cross-over ideas and shared technologies. The goal of the conference is to stimulate dialogue among relevant, actively-engaged participants in the medical and oil fields. This will no doubt lead to the formulation of new ideas and the sharing of new technologies between these industries that face similar challenges, even if on different scales.

This by-invitation-only event will provide common language and terminology to all parties, as well as provide a platform to discuss the hurdles facing each discipline. Talks will focus on anatomy, pathophysiology, how the petroleum industry maintains flow in the pipeline infrastructure, and other topics with potential crossover. The intended audience includes researchers from medical device manufacturers, computer scientists, imaging specialists, physicists and engineers from academia; geologists, physicists and researchers from the oil and gas industry; and vascular biologists, researchers and clinicians interested in cardiovascular disease.