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prof.Dr.-Ing. J. Arens (Jutta)

Full Professor

About Me

Consciously breathe in and out one time. This is exactly what you unconsciously do about 20,000 times a day to supply your body with oxygen. In some cases, however, various illnesses and diseases can interfere with the pulmonary gas exchange in the lungs and thus become a life-threatening problem. If medical treatment, drug therapy, and artificial respiration cannot help, artificial lungs can be used as an intensive care treatment.

The development of such artificial lungs into a realistic organ replacement is a dedicated research focus of Dr.-Ing. Jutta Arens, Professor and Chair of Engineering Organ Support Technologies at UTwente. Jutta works together with partners from the medical, natural, and engineering sciences inter alia as part of the German Research Foundation’s “Towards an Implantable Lung” priority program to address the diverse issues that arise from artificial lung systems in contact with blood. She combines engineering and medicine to the benefit of patients and contributes her knowledge on a national and international level to develop standards for testing and approving artificial organs in order to ensure patient safety. In her free time, she likes to take deep breaths while enjoying long-distance hikes.

Expertise

Engineering & Materials Science
# Blood
# Membranes
# Oxygenation
# Oxygenators
Medicine & Life Sciences
# Gases
# Heart-Lung Machine
# Oxygenators
Chemistry
# Oxygenation

Organisations

Ancillary Activities

  • German Federal Institute of Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM)
    Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
  • Perfusion
    Member of the Editorial Board of “Perfusion"
  • ASAIO
    Member of Board of Trustees of ASAIO
  • ISO
    Member of ISO/TC 150/SC 2/WG 4 – Extracorporeal Circuits
  • NEN
    Member of NEN Standards Committee (NC) 301060 ‘Implants for surgery’
  • Transplant International
    Member of the Editorial Board of "Transplant International"

Research

The last two years, before coming to University of Twente in November 2019, Jutta Arens was the acting head of the Department of Cardiovascular Engineering, CVE, Institute of Applied Medical Engineering, RWTH Aachen University with the core competencies of the department being in the development of heart assist and lung assist devices and their preclinical testing including computer simulations and the development and design of special purpose in-vitro test setups. Within the CVE over the past decade Dr.-Ing. Jutta Arens build up the Group `Artificial Lung Technologies´, at the beginning mainly focusing on miniaturization concepts for oxygenators used for newborns and preterm infants. This resulted in research on a Heart-Lung Machine for neonates with congenital heart defects (her PhD project) and the artificial placenta system NeonatOx. Miniaturization and modularization concepts were investigated for ECMO systems for personalized treatment and to allow for the mobilization of ICU patients including the development of new production methods. An overarching goal has been the improvement of hemocompatibility of the assist devices in order to make them long-term stable. Therefore, the group worked on reliable CFD simulation concepts and flow visualization inside the oxygenators´ fiber bundle by PIV in order to be able to validate the flow simulations in detail and to better understand the flow distribution between the hollow fibers. Active mixing in the oxygenators´ fiber bundle, the simulation of the gas exchange, evaluate in vitro the modeling of thrombus growth, and the influence of pulsatile blood flow on the gas exchange capacity of oxygenators were research topics as well as the work on an alternative method for the connection of ECMO systems to patients. 

Jutta studied Mechanical Engineering at RWTH Aachen University with specilization in Plastics Technologie and Medical Engineering and performed her PhD at the above mentioned Institute in Aachen.

She now holds the Chair of Engineering Organ Support Systems within the Department of Biomechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering Technologies. Her research at UTwente will mainly focus on artificial organs such as Artificial Lungs (oxygenators), Heart Assist, and Kidney Replacement with strong emphasis of combining these therapies in highly integrated devices and increasing their long-term stability and blood-compatibility.

Publications

Recent
Ligtenberg, L.-J. W., Ekkelkamp, I. A. A. , Halfwerk, F. R. , Goulas, C. , Arens, J., Warlé, M. , & Khalil, I. S. M. (2023). Helical Propulsion in Low-Re Numbers with Near-Zero Angle of Attack. In 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (pp. 2647-2652). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/iros55552.2023.10341627
Halfwerk, F. R. , Duinmeijer, W. , Groenier, M. , & Arens, J. (2023). Patient Centred Educational ECMO Simulator (EduECMO) – An international training needs analysis. 7-8. Abstract from SPP 2014 – TOWARDS AN IMPLANTABLE LUNG
AUTUMN RESEARCH MEETING 2023, Enschede, Netherlands.
Halfwerk, F. R., Smits, K. , Hekman, E. E. G., van Es, J. , Koenrades, M. A. , Arens, J., & Speekenbrink, R. (2023). In situ patient-specific simulation of complex cardiac surgery: A simulation-based observational study with 3D heart models. Abstract from 28th Annual Meeting of the Society for Simulation Applied to Medicine, SESAM 2023, Lisbon, Portugal.
Strudthoff, L., Focke, J. M., Hesselmann, F., Kaesler, A. , Martins Costa, A., Schlanstein, P. C., Schmitz-Rode, T., Steinseifer, U., Steuer, N. B., Wiegmann, B. , Arens, J., & Jansen, S. V. (2023). Novel Size-Variable Dedicated Rodent Oxygenator for ECLS Animal Models: Introduction of the “Ratox” Oxygenator and Preliminary In-Vitro Results. Micromachines, 14(4), Article 800. https://doi.org/10.3390/mi14040800
Duinmeijer, W. C. , Fresiello, L., Swol, J., Torrella, P., Riera, J., Obreja, V., Puślecki, M., Dąbrowski, M. , Arens, J. , & Halfwerk, F. R. (2023). Simulators and Simulations for Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation: An ECMO Scoping Review. Journal of Clinical Medicine, 12(5), Article 1765. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm12051765
Hugenroth, K., Krooß, F., Hima, F., Strudthoff, L., Kopp, R. , Arens, J., Kalverkamp, S., Steinseifer, U., Neidlin, M., & Spillner, J. (2023). Inflow from a Cardiopulmonary Assist System to the Pulmonary Artery and Its Implications for Local Hemodynamics—a Computational Fluid Dynamics Study. Journal of cardiovascular translational research, 16(4), 842-851. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12265-022-10349-3
Arens, J., Schraven, L., Kaesler, A., Flege, C., Schmitz-Rode, T., Rossaint, R., Steinseifer, U., & Kopp, R. (2023). Development and evaluation of a variable, miniaturized oxygenator for various test methods. Artificial organs, 47(4), 695-704. https://doi.org/10.1111/aor.14465
Vercaemst, L. , Arens, J., Maul, T., & Toomasian, J. (2022). The Circuit. In G. McLaren, D. Brodie, R. Lorusso, G. Peek, R. Thiagarajan, & L. Vercaemst (Eds.), Extracorporeal Life Support: The ELSO Red Book (6 ed., pp. 29-46). Extracorporeal Life Support Organization.
Klein, M., Tack, J. C., Mager, I., Maas, J., Schmitz-Rode, T. , Arens, J., Steinseifer, U., & Clauser, J. C. (2022). In vitro thrombogenicity evaluation of rotary blood pumps by thromboelastometry. Biomedizinische Technik, 67(6), 471-480. https://doi.org/10.1515/bmt-2022-0078
Li, C. , Halfwerk, F. R. , Arens, J. , Misra, S., Warlé, M. C. , & S. M. Khalil, I. (2022). Controlled Helical Propulsion Against the Flow of a Physiological Fluid. Paper presented at 5th Annual International Conference on Manipulation, Automation and Robotics at Small Scales, MARSS 2021, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. https://doi.org/10.1109/marss55884.2022.9870248
Hesselmann, F., Halwes, M., Bongartz, P. , Wessling, M., Cornelissen, C., Schmitz-Rode, T., Steinseifer, U., Jansen, S. V. , & Arens, J. (2022). TPMS-based membrane lung with locally-modified permeabilities for optimal flow distribution. Scientific reports, 12(1), Article 7160. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-11175-y
Strudthoff, L., Lüken, H., Jansen, S. V., Petran, J., Schlanstein, P. C., Schraven, L., Schürmann, B. J., Steuer, N., Wagner, G., Schmitz-Rode, T., Steinseifer, U. , Arens, J., & Kopp, R. (2022). In Vitro and In Vivo Feasibility Study for a Portable VV-ECMO and ECCO2R System. Membranes, 12(2), Article 133. https://doi.org/10.3390/membranes12020133
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University of Twente
Faculty of Engineering Technology
Horst Complex (building no. 20), room W116
De Horst 2
7522LW  Enschede
The Netherlands

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Faculty of Engineering Technology
Horst Complex  W116
P.O. Box 217
7500 AE Enschede
The Netherlands

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