In this open access volume, interested readers will find a number of modern approaches to modeling excitable tissue applied to current open research questions in the field via student reports from the 2024 and 2025 Simula Summer School in Computational Physiology (SSCP). 

SSCP is co-hosted by Simula, the University of Oslo (UiO), and UCSD. The course focuses on modeling excitable tissues. Masters and PhD students conduct group research projects, and each group produces a report addressing a specific problem of importance in physiology. Reports may not necessarily represent new scientific results; rather, they can reproduce or supplement earlier computational or experimental studies. 

Reports from eight of the summer projects are included as separate chapters. The fields represented include cardiac electrophysiology (Chapters 1-3), pancreatic beta-cell electrophysiology (Chapters 4-5), subcellular cardiac calcium handling (Chapter 6), cardiac mechanics (Chapter 7), and biology-inspired AI (Chapter 8). 

Kimberly J. McCabe is a Senior Research Scientist at Simula Research Laboratory and the Programme Director for the Simula-UiO-UCSD Research PhD Training Programme (SUURPh). She holds a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego and her research focuses on subcellular modeling of cardiac mechanics and calcium handling.