Dr Silvia Schievano awarded £1m

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council has awarded Dr Silvia Schievano £1m to develop new devices and tools that can be customised in-house for the treatment of children with congenital diseases.

Silvia was one of only nine researchers in the UK to be awarded a Healthcare Technologies Challenge Award to work on innovative projects that promise to improve healthcare diagnosis and treatment.

Devices purposefully designed for treating children with congenital defects are rare due to the small size of the paediatric market compared to the adult population, but also to the huge variations that are encountered in birth defects compared to acquired diseases.

Computational modelling based on routinely acquired clinical data will be used to study each patient dysfunctional site, and drive the device personalisation and optimisation process by simulating device implantation and interaction with the biological site.

Silvia’s research interests are mainly on the application of engineering methodologies to the study of patho-physiological conditions in the human body; modelling of biomedical devices, in particular toward the development of patient specific models to study cardiovascular disease and treatments; development of computational methods to accelerate biomedical product development process and enhance safety in first-in-man procedures.

• Dr Silvia Schievano
• Clinical Cardiovascular Engineering