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
In 1986, Trayanova joined Duke University working with Robert Plonsey on rhythmic dysfunction in the heart.[2] In 1995 she was appointed associate professor at Tulane University, where she was awarded the several awards for teaching excellence.[4][5] She began to develop computer models for the heart but found that the cardiologists were not enthusiastic about computer modelling.[5] After Hurricane Katrina, several research institutions asked Trayanova to relocate and join them.[5] She was awarded a Fulbright Program Visiting Professorship and spent several months at the University of Oxford.[citation needed]
In 2006, Trayanova was recruited to Johns Hopkins University as a Professor in the Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering and Institute for Computational Science.[6] Her work considers computational simulations of the heart.[7] She was elected a Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society and American Heart Association in 2010.[8][9] In 2011 she developed a computational framework that allowed virtual drug screening, simulating the drug-channel interactions and predicting the impact of drugs on electrical activity of the heart.[5]
In 2012, she was named the Murray B Sachs Endowed Chair in Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering Department.[2] In 2013 she was awarded the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award, which allowed her to develop a virtual electrophysiology lab.[10] 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.[10] She has received extensive support from the Maryland Innovation Initiative.[11] In 2019, she was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame,[12] and she also received the 2019 Heart Rhythm Society Distinguished Scientist Award.[13] Also in 2019, she was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.[14]
She is the Chief Scientific Officer of Cardiosolv Ablation Technologies, a start-up that develops computational tools to help the treatment of ventricular tachycardia.[15] She gave a TED talk in 2017 entitled Your Personal Virtual Heart.[16] 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.[17] She was elected a Fellow of the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering in 2017.[18] She has been featured on Reddit AMA r/science,[19] has been interviewed by the BBC, NPR, the Economist, and has been on the Amazing Things Podcast.[20]
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