Professor Blanca Rodriguez

About

Professor Rodriguez uses computational modelling and simulation to understand what causes the heart to respond in differing ways to disease and therapies. She and her research group work closely with experimental and clinical electrophysiologists and pharmacologists in academia, hospitals and industry.

Understanding variability in cardiac response to disease, drugs or mutations is key to determine who, when and how cardiac patients may be at risk, and how to improve their diagnosis and treatment. The mechanisms underlying cardiac electromechanical activity are complex, multiscale and non-linear, involving numerous multiscale feedback loops from the gene to the whole body level. Computational modelling and simulation, integrated with experimental and clinical research, can help in overcoming the challenges involved in dissecting the key mechanisms underlying potentially lethal abnormalities in cardiac activity, such as cardiac arrhythmias.

Professor Rodriguez is a member of the Board of the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research, and of the e-cardiology Nucleus Group of the European Society of Cardiology.