Federica Galbiati

Early Stage Researcher 07

I am a biomechanical engineer from Italy. Since I was a child, the human body and the medical field have always fascinated me. During the high school, I became passionate about technology and math. Following this, I decided to pursue all my passions by studying biomedical engineering at Politecnico di Milano, where I earned both my Bachelor’s (2016) and Master’s (2019) degrees. Here, I developed a strong interest in computational modeling and its application to the medical field, in particular to study, understand, and model the evolution of cardiovascular pathologies starting from clinical data. With the desire to work in the research field, I decided to continue my studies and start my career applying for a Ph.D. In this context, MeDiTATe seemed to me the perfect opportunity to be part of an interesting and challenging international research environment, working towards patient-specific modeling of aneurysm growth. In fact, it represents an invaluable chance to gain research experience in both academia and industry by participating in a project aimed at translating scientific knowledge into real applications that can be helpful for clinicians and patients.

During my doctoral studies, I will work at the Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne, where I am enrolled as Ph.D. student, and at RINA Consulting in Rome. The major objective of my research is finding alternative indicators to assess the ascending thoracic aortic aneurysm evolution and risk of rupture. On one side, the idea is to use a multiscale finite element model to predict the evolution of the pathology based on a mechanobiological description of the tissue mechanical properties. Towards this goal, we aim to develop a micromechanical framework to describe the growth and remodeling occurring in the aortic tissue as a response to the constantly evolving bio-chemo-mechanical environment. On the other side, we intend to use computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and fluid-structure interaction (FSI) models for a better understanding of the link between hemodynamic and arterial wall properties as well as the influence of the blood flow in the aneurysm evolution. During a secondment at Fondazione Toscana Gabriele Monasterio, I am going to cooperate with BioCardioLab, working on experimental strategies and testing activities to characterize the in vivo behavior of the aneurysmatic tissue.