A.G. De sa Vivas MSc (Aisen)

I am Biomedical Engineer by training with a general interest in technology. The exciting combination of biology, physics, chemistry, electronics, microfluidics and mechanics that entails the fabrication of Organs on Chips was the driving force that led me to do a PhD.

My project consists on the fabrication of a Heart on Chip and related fluidic interfacing, having as an ultimate goal a drug assay platform. The raising morbidity and the increasing costs in drug discovery in cardiovascular diseases lead to explore new methods that close the bridge between animal models and culture well plates - with physiological and simplistic limitations, respectively -, while reducing animal testing and costs. Such platform will unravel some of the intricate interactions that take place in the human heart and its vasculature, providing valuable insights to the field.

The, sometimes, conflicting ways of thinking of biology and engineering creates an exciting interphase where previously unrelated fields come into a meeting point, creating innovative and unraveling approaches that can be used in medicine. At AST, our interdisciplinary team brings to focus all the different aspects that are involved in the creation of Organs on Chips.