Natalia Trayanova is a Bulgarian physicist who is a professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and a Professor of Medicine in the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. ^[1] She directs the Alliance for Cardiovascular Diagnostic and Treatment Innovation ^[2]

Contents

• Early life and education
• Research and career
• References

Early life and education

Trayanova's father was a physiologist and director of the Biophysics Institute in Bulgaria. ^[3] Her mother was a professor of economics. ^[3] She studied physics at Sofia University, graduating in 1982. ^[4] She earned a PhD from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 1986, where she studied skeletal muscle fibre trans-membrane potential ^[4]

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. ^[3] In 1995 she was appointed associate professor at Tulane University, where she was earned several awards for teaching excellence. ^{[5] [6]} 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. ^[6] In 2002, she was awarded a Fulbright Program Visiting Professorship and spent January through May of 2002 at the University of Oxford. ^[7]

In 2006, Trayanova was recruited to Johns Hopkins University as a Professor in the Johns Hopkins Department of Biomedical Engineering and Institute for Computational Medicine. ^[8] Her work considers computational simulations of the heart. ^[9] She was elected a Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society and American Heart Association in 2010. ^{[10] [11]} 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. ^[6]

In 2012, she was named the Murray B Sachs Endowed Chair in the Johns Hopkins Department of Biomedical Engineering. ^[3] In 2013 she was awarded the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award, which allowed her to develop a virtual electrophysiology lab. ^[12] 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. ^[12] She has received extensive support from the Maryland Innovation Initiative. ^[13] In 2019, she was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame, ^[14] and she also received the 2019 Heart Rhythm Society Distinguished Scientist Award. ^[15] Also in 2019, she was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. ^[16]

She is the Chief Scientific Officer of Cardiosolv Ablation Technologies, a start-up that develops computational tools to help the treatment of ventricular tachycardia. ^[17] She gave a TED talk in 2017 entitled Your Personal Virtual Heart. ^[18] 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. ^[19] She was elected a Fellow of the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering in 2017. ^[20] She has been featured on Reddit AMA r/science, ^[21] has been interviewed by the BBC, NPR, the Economist, and has been on the Amazing Things Podcast. ^[22]

References