SALMOSS Team

I am a Principal Research Scientist at MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science and Profesora Titular in Bioengineering at Institut Químic de Sarrià (IQS), Ramon Llull University, in Barcelona, Spain. 

My research in tissue engineering has shown how endothelial cell states are critical to tissue response to injury. I was the first to show that cells respond to flow frequency not just shear stress and in a manner which is tissue bed dependent. I demonstrated that cells lining blood vessels, lungs or gastrointestinal tract proliferate optimally under flow conditions whose frequency is tuned to the operating frequency of their host tissue. This simple notion was borne out in sophisticated experimental models carefully matched through dimensional analysis. My group develops novel culture methods and perfusion systems that enable patient-specific geometrical parameters to tissue response. Those methods have been used to characterize cellular response to medical devices and pharmaceutical formulations in collaboration with industry.

Through my dual appointment at MIT and IQS, I have promoted innovative, highly productive research and educative exchanges between both institutions and countries for the past 25 years. As a direct consequence of my work in extending MIT’s international opportunities for students and faculty I created and direct the MIT-Spain Program since 2006. In 2011, Spain’s government bestowed me with the Cross of the Order of the Civil Merit for my contribution to establish a fruitful channel between MIT and my home country, Spain. I chair MIT innovation program IDEA² within MIT LinQ Initiative. For my service to MIT and to the world, I received the 2019 MIT Excellence Awards “Advancing inclusion and global perspectives: maximizing MIT’s strengths”.

I am a passionate scientist who embraces working with physicians and clinicians as well as industry partners to accelerate the path of new technologies and therapies from bench to bedside. I am also a motivated mentor and the projects I lead become the ideal venue to educate the next generation of engineers, biologists, material scientists, physicians, computer scientists and chemists who learn collaboration is the best way to solve today’s greatest challenges in health.