Name:
RegMedNet Rising Star Award: an interview with the 2023 winner
Description:
RegMedNet Rising Star Award: an interview with the 2023 winner
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Duration:
T00H13M28S
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https://cadmoreoriginalmedia.blob.core.windows.net/d97eec19-7a68-4e69-ac92-f537ecf2095d/RMN-2023-023.mp4?sv=2019-02-02&sr=c&sig=9m0mezjKRBqsZO99ccaozZmeFk5x9s9iZgBYYQQUYOw%3D&st=2024-05-09T10%3A13%3A25Z&se=2024-05-09T12%3A18%3A25Z&sp=r
Upload Date:
2023-12-21T00:00:00.0000000
Transcript:
Language: EN.
Segment:0 .
Segment:1 You initially studied mathematics, what drew you to regenerative medicine?.
Since I was a child I always loved mathematics. So I always thought that I wanted to become a mathematician but over the years I discovered I loved the applied potential of mathematics. The fact that with mathematics, you could understand and predict things.
Then I think at the end of my high school years, I read a book by Michael Crichton. The book was called "next" and it is a techno-thriller. It was talking about genetic engineering and then I thought it's an interesting topic. Although it was a techno-thriller and so forth, I got intrigued by the possibility of using mathematics in a biomedical setting. So I thought about that and decided that I wanted to study mathematics during my university years and apply that to a medical setting.
Then after my university years, I applied for a position here in Eindhoven. Where they were looking for someone able to accelerate simulations of tissue-engineered heart valves, which was of course very instrumental for me to enter and continue in this world, but more or less like serendipity! You read something, you get captivated by it, and then you follow your path.
Segment:2 How did you manage the difficulty of switching fields? .
I managed to to switch fields because I was really resilient. I knew that it was not going to be easy but at the same time, I really wanted this and I was lucky enough to find an environment that is very multidisciplinary. So yeah, I was perhaps the only mathematician, I don't remember, but at the same time my supervisors were used to receiving PhD students from very different fields. At that point, I knew what I didn't know, so I tried to get as much information from all over the place: I was attending summer schools, I was attending lectures, I was reading articles and then especially I was interacting with many colleagues here that over time became my friends. I was not afraid to ask questions.
The most important thing is that you have to embrace the fact that you are not different but you come from a different background. You have to embrace the fact that you have much to learn and then at that point you can just ask questions without being afraid of sounding like you don't know things because actually you don't know them. So it's fine, you just learn over time.
Segment:3 What advice would you give to young researchers contemplating switching fields? .
Always be resilient, meaning that once you change fields, you do it because you want to have an impact and see things from a different perspective. It might be that initially, you will need some time to understand how you can have an impact but you need to be confident of your capabilities and the fact that over time you can really learn something new. The time that you spend learning something new is an investment for the future. It's also an investment towards having an impact on society and also having an impact in the field. If you come from a different field, then you can again ask questions that nobody from within the field would ask because oftentimes we take things for granted. If you come from a different field, then you can ask questions that can challenge the status quo and then change things.
Segment:4 Can you briefly describe your work to date? .
Starting from my PhD, as I said, I was invited to come to Eindhoven because they needed someone to accelerate simulations. In particular, they had a very good computational model that was able to replicate and simulate the remodelling of collagen fibers within soft tissues in response to mechanical stimuli. However, these simulations were taking too much time so what I did at the beginning of my PhD was to develop algorithms that were able to accelerate these simulations and enable the the simulation of years of remodeling of collagen fibers as influenced by the behavior of the cells to better understand this behavior. Then I performed other simulations, coupled with experiments performed by colleagues and collaborators, so that we could predict and understand why and what kind of mechanisms were driving the reorientation, not only of the collagen fibers, but also of the cells in response to both mechanical stimuli and topographical stimuli.
This was the focus of my PhD, and after that I followed more or less a track that brought me to this point but basically I was simulating cell behavior in response to mechanical stimuli. During my postdoc, I initially started simulating the cell-cell signaling between the cells in arteries as influenced by mechanical stimuli. Then I moved to Boston and I began performing research in the field of blood vessel formation: angiogenesis. I went to Boston to learn how to perform experiments and then using my past knowledge of computational simulations, I combined simulations and experiments to unravel the mechanisms that are driving and controlling the process of blood vessel formation. The scope is to apply this knowledge for the control of the angiogenesis process, both in a disease setting and in a tissue engineering setting.
Segment:5 What are the applications of this research?.
The current application is indeed focused on angiogenesis. Angiogenesis is a process that is very important for development and when it is dysregulated it can lead to pathologies such as cancer, it can also be associated with endometriosis which is another pathology, as well as diabetic retinopathy. In these cases we want to control angiogenesis, for example in cancer and endometriosis, we may want to block angiogenesis because the formation of these new blood vessels favors the growth of the tissue that is characteristic of cancer and endometriosis.
At the same time, angiogenesis is important in the field of tissue engineering because to develop relatively large tissue engineered constructs, we need to provide each cell within the construct with appropriate nutrients. We can do so only by inducing a physiological vascular network. To do so, we need to control the process of angiogenesis: favoring potentiating at the start but also reaching homeostasis once the blood vessels are formed.
Segment:6 What research area or questions are you interested in exploring in the future? .
I mean, in my past, as I told you, I've mainly performed research in simulations, and now I'm integrating the simulations with experiments. I've always been interested in performing this coupling more from a very rigorous and systematic point of view. So it would be nice to integrate the simulations and experiments via methods that are really designed to systematically perform this coupling. This perhaps can be done by combining hypothesis-driven modeling with data-driven modeling that is growing right now. So I think the future is really going to be about combining these two approaches in such a way that we can really facilitate the development of data-driven hypothesis-driven predictions, let's say.
Segment:7 If you had unlimited resources, what research would you undertake?.
I think if I had unlimited resources, I would like to build sort of a virtual reality of collective cells and collective tissues such that we can expose these cells and tissues to a myriad of stimuli and then you can predict what is going on. So yeah, I actually think many researchers are thinking about that - a digital twin of the cells and tissues so that you can really perform in silico experiments in a very accurate and trustworthy fashion in the computer.
Segment:8 What moment in your career are you most proud of?.
Well, there are several moments. I think the first chapter of my thesis and the last chapter of my thesis are among them. The first chapter is about the the acceleration of the algorithm to enable the simulation of heart valves. In that case, I'm very proud of it because it was really the first impact that I had and the first proof that switching fields from mathematics to biomedical engineering was worthwhile and that I could make a contribution.
While the last chapter of my thesis was focused on the prediction of collagen fiber alignment in native pediatric heart valves. In that case could really see the potential of mathematics because with very simple assumptions, without changing the parameters, we could really capture the alignment of these collagen fibers. So there was something within the model that was able to to replicate that. It really gives the beauty of mathematics; simple equations can explain biology.
Then of course, also the fact that I was able to continue my career in academia by getting grants and by getting this position at [Eindhoven University of Technology]. I was proud because this was the dream that I had since I was a child, to become a researcher in academia. So I kind of completed the circle.