From April 8 to April 13, 2024, the Faculty of Physics of ITMO University and Harbin Engineering University organized an international school for undergraduate and graduate students “School on Acoustics: from Fundamentals to Frontiers” at the Qingdao Innovation and Development Center of Harbin Engineering University in Qingdao, China.

The program for participants included:

• lectures from world experts in various fields of acoustics 
• student poster sessions
• practical classes with numerical and experimental tracks
• competition of student works with prizes
• cultural activities

LIMU Associate Professor Sergey A. Tsysar was invited by the school organizers as one of the lecturers and student projects jury members.

His lecture “Medical applications of high intensity focused ultrasound” covered a wide range of ultrasound applications in medicine. A brief review of modern clinical applications in urology, cardiology, gastroenterology, bioengineering and immunology was provided. New experimental and numerical methods for accurate reconstruction of transducer vibration pattern for setting a boundary condition in the modeling and treatment planning were considered; examples of HIFU transducers to achieve the required amplitudes of the shock front at the focus were given; physical mechanisms of mechanical and thermal effects on tissue, cavitation effects in tissue, the influence of acoustic properties of tissue on nonlinear focusing and in situ field parameters, features of acoustic and MRI visualization of the affected area, features of morphological and ultrastructural changes in tissue caused by ultrasound were discussed. Lecture aroused keen interest among students, a large number of questions and following discussion!

A short video report about the school is on the ITMO Telegram channel.