Blanca Rodriguez (scientist)

Blanca Rodriguez is a Spanish computer scientist, Professor of Computational Medicine, Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow and head of computational biology at the University of Oxford. Her research considers the development of in silico models for drug discovery and digital twins for the identification of innovative therapies.

Blanca Rodriguez
Born
Alma materUniversity of Valencia
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of Oxford
Tulane University

Early life and education

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Rodriguez is from Valencia. She studied engineering at the Technical University of Valencia. As a student Rodriguez knew nothing about cardiology, but she attended a talk by an arrhythmia specialist. She decided to pursue a career in research, and completed a doctorate in computational biology.[1] She moved to Tulane University for her postdoctoral research, where she spent two years before moving to the University of Oxford as postdoc in St Cross College.[2][2]

Research and career

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Rodriguez was made a professor at Oxford in 2007. She leads the Computational Cardiovascular Science Team, where she develops methodologies for advanced therapeutics. Rodriguez studies the causes and modulators of differences in human pathophysiology.[3] Her early work considered the mechanisms that underpinned cardiac arrhythmias and their diagnosis. Cardiac arrhythmias impact large numbers of people worldwide and can have several causes, including mutations, disease and drugs. Rodriguez uses computational modelling and simulation to identify new treatment pathways for cardiac arrhythmia.[4][5]

Rodriguez has developed digital twins for precision medicine[6] and in silico trials for new therapies. In silico methodologies can be used for drug development, and digital twins can eliminate the need for animals in research.[7][8][9]

In 2015 she was appointed to the Board of the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research.[3]

Awards and honours

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  • 2012 MRC Centenary Award[4]
  • 2013 Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship in Biomedical Sciences
  • 2017 NC3Rs International Prize[10]
  • 2018 MPLS Impact Award[11]
  • 2018 AWS Machine Learning Research Award[1]

Select publications

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References

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  1. ^ a b "Blanca Rodriguez: Computational simulation of the human heart". Amazon Science. 2021-10-18. Retrieved 2024-10-19.
  2. ^ a b "Professor Blanca Rodriguez". www.stx.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2024-10-19.
  3. ^ a b "NC3Rs announces new board members | NC3Rs". nc3rs.org.uk. Retrieved 2024-10-19.
  4. ^ a b "Medical Research Council commends Oxford computational medicine research". Department of Computer Science. Retrieved 2024-10-19.
  5. ^ "Professor Blanca Rodriguez | University of Oxford". www.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2024-10-20.
  6. ^ Margara, Francesca; Psaras, Yiangos; Wang, Zhinuo Jenny; Schmid, Manuel; Doste, Ruben; Garfinkel, Amanda C.; Repetti, Giuliana G.; Seidman, Jonathan G.; Seidman, Christine E.; Rodriguez, Blanca; Toepfer, Christopher N.; Bueno-Orovio, Alfonso (2022-12-28). "Mechanism based therapies enable personalised treatment of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy". Scientific Reports. 12 (1): 22501. Bibcode:2022NatSR..1222501M. doi:10.1038/s41598-022-26889-2. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 9797561. PMID 36577774.
  7. ^ Corral-Acero, Jorge; Margara, Francesca; Marciniak, Maciej; Rodero, Cristobal; Loncaric, Filip; Feng, Yingjing; Gilbert, Andrew; Fernandes, Joao F; Bukhari, Hassaan A; Wajdan, Ali; Martinez, Manuel Villegas; Santos, Mariana Sousa; Shamohammdi, Mehrdad; Luo, Hongxing; Westphal, Philip (2020-12-21). "The 'Digital Twin' to enable the vision of precision cardiology". European Heart Journal. 41 (48): 4556–4564. doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehaa159. ISSN 0195-668X. PMC 7774470. PMID 32128588.
  8. ^ Rodriguez, Blanca; Passini, Elisa; Benito, Patricia (2018-03-26). "Why computer simulations should replace animal testing for heart drugs". The Conversation. Retrieved 2024-10-20.
  9. ^ "Computer simulations move step closer to reducing animal use in drug testing | University of Oxford". www.ox.ac.uk. 2018-03-12. Retrieved 2024-10-20.
  10. ^ "International 3Rs Prize awarded for computer modelling that predicts human cardiac safety better than animal studies | NC3Rs". nc3rs.org.uk. Retrieved 2024-10-19.
  11. ^ "Blanca Rodriguez wins the MPLS Impact Award". www.vph-institute.org. Retrieved 2024-10-19.