Maria Nicole Antonuccio

Early Stage Researcher 14

After finishing high school in a small town in the south of Italy, I continued my studies in Pisa and received a Bachelor’s (2016) and Master’s (2019) degrees in Biomedical Engineering. During my studies, I developed a strong interest in cardiovascular science. To further deepen my knowledge in this field, I decided to pursue an Erasmus+ internship at the University College and Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. For my thesis, I introduced a novel approach to tune the outlet boundary conditions in the case of aortic coarctation and performed a computational analysis to investigate their effects. At the end of my studies, I realized that research was an activity I would like to engage in even more. Moreover, since my long-age ambition is providing my support to improve people’s life quality, I aimed to work in an application and research-oriented field such as the one proposed by the MeDiTATe training network. My goal is to become a researcher highly trained and able to apply the skills acquired across academic, industrial, and clinical areas in daily life situations and to interface contexts even broader, multivariate, and multifaceted than those encountered so far.

My research is contributing to the development of a new tool for estimating non-invasively hemodynamic descriptors in the aorta, such as blood flow and pressure, through dynamic Doppler Ultrasound imaging. These hemodynamic parameters can be used to support the characterization of the arterial wall or the prediction of abdominal aortic aneurysm rupture to advance global understanding of this disease. I was enrolled in the doctoral program at Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne in March 2020. During the Ph.D., I have the opportunity to work in 3 different places: Philips France for 18 months, Mines Saint-Etienne (France) for a long secondment, and Fondazione Toscana “G. Monasterio” (Italy). I have the chance to exploit the broad expertise of these three institutions and collaborate with experienced researchers. In particular, Dr. Laurence Rouet, Dr. Hernan Morales, and Dr. Alexandre This from Philips France support me in developing software components. Dr. Simona Celi from Fondazione Toscana “G. Monasterio” provides her long-age experience in computational and experimental activities to support in-vitro testing and validation of the tool. Professor Stéphane Avril from Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne supervises my dissemination activities and advises my research, which is also encouraged by a fruitful dialogue with clinical teams from Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen (Denmark) and Ospedale del Cuore in Massa (Italy).