Natalia Trayanova is a Bulgarian physicist who is a professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. She directs the Alliance for Cardiovascular Diagnostic and Treatment Innovation [1]
Trayanova's father was a physiologist and director of the Biophysics Institute in Bulgaria.[2] Her mother was a professor of economics.[2] She studied physics at Sofia University, graduating in 1982.[3] Her father gave her a copy of Robert Plonsey's book, Bioelectric Phenomena, and Trayanova realised she could use her physics expertise in biology.[2] She earned a PhD from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 1986, where she studied skeletal muscle fibre biopotentials[3]
Research and career
After completing her Ph.D., Trayanova moved to the United States to pursue an academic career in biomedical engineering. In 1986, she joined Duke University as a researcher working with Professor Robert Plonsey on heart rhythm dysfunction.[2] In 1995 she was appointed associate professor at Tulane University, where she was earned several awards for teaching excellence.[4][5] Her early forays into heart modeling were pioneering and focused on mechanistic insight into clinically-relevant conditions, but the basic-science nature of the work failed to capture the interest of clinical researchers and medical professors. [5] After Hurricane Katrina, Tulane University closed its School of Engineering and folded the engineering discipline into the School of Science and Engineering. [6] As a result of this, Trayanova began seeking a new home institution. [5] She was awarded a Fulbright Program Visiting Professorship and spent several months at the University of Oxford.[citation needed]
In 2012, she was named the Murray B Sachs Endowed Chair in the Johns Hopkins Department of Biomedical Engineering.[2] In 2013 she was awarded the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award, which allowed her to develop a virtual electrophysiology lab.[11] The award gave her $2.5 million over five years to develop patient-specific computational models of the heart, allowing for doctors to provide personalised treatment and diagnoses.[11] She has received extensive support from the Maryland Innovation Initiative.[12] In 2019, she was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame,[13] and she also received the 2019 Heart Rhythm Society Distinguished Scientist Award.[14] Also in 2019, she was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.[15]
She is the Chief Scientific Officer of Cardiosolv Ablation Technologies, a start-up that develops computational tools to help the treatment of ventricular tachycardia.[16] She gave a TED talk in 2017 entitled Your Personal Virtual Heart.[17] She was selected by the National Institutes of Health to take part in a briefing at Capitol Hill looking to defend the federal funding of scientific research.[18] She was elected a Fellow of the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering in 2017.[19] She has been featured on Reddit AMA r/science,[20] has been interviewed by the BBC, NPR, the Economist, and has been on the Amazing Things Podcast.[21]
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