At the General Assembly held on Sept 17th in London, the representatives of the supporting members who now form the Board of Directors, were formally presented to the VPH Community.
The supporting members institutions which now have a seat in the VPH Institute Board of Directors (BoD) are those organizations who participated to the call for supporting members in May this year and agreed to sustain the Institute finance paying a €9000 quota.
What are these Institutions and who represents them?
The Board of Directors is composed by 11 Institutions that excel worldwide for their research quality, and are actively involved in VPH, most of them being partners on VPH funded research projects.
Some of the Institutions were already members of the Board of Directors from last year and decided to keep their guidance role for the upcoming year too, some others recently joined the Institute and are ready to fresh start their collaboration bringing in their expertise and motivation:
1. University of Sheffield USFD (U.K.):http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/
Represented byProf. Marco Viceconti, current Executive Directorof the Institute. Prof Viceconti is full Professor of Biomechanics in the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering at University of Sheffield and Scientific Director of the new Insigneo Sheffield Research Institute. He is also the Coordinator of both VPHOP (http://www.vphop.eu/) and NMS Physiome (http://www.nmsphysiome.eu/) projects.
2. Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique – INRIA (France):http://www.inria.fr/
Represented by Nicholas Ayache, a distinguished INRIA scientist, current Research Director at INRIA Sophia Antipolis – Méditerranée.
3. Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino GesĂą (Italy):www.ospedalebambinogesu.it
Represented by Prof. Giacomo Pongiglione, Director of the Department of Medicine Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery.
4. Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain):http://i3a.unizar.es/
Represented by Prof. Jose Manuel Garcia Aznar, Associate Director of the Biomedical Engineering Division of the AragĂłn Institute of Engineering Research (I3A), University of Zaragoza.
5. UniversitĂ di Roma "Foro Italico" (Italy):http://www.uniroma4.it/
Represented by Prof. Aurelio Cappozzo, Director of the Department of Human Movement Science and Sport.
6. University of Auckland (New Zeeland): http://www.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/
Represented by Prof. Peter Hunter, Director of the Auckland Bioengineering Institute (ABI) a cross-faculty research centre, which deals with the application of mathematical and engineering sciences to biology and human physiology, aiming to improve understanding of physiological processes and the diagnosis and treatment of injury or disease.
7. University College London (U.K.):http://www.ucl.ac.uk/
Represented by Prof. Peter Coveney who holds a Chair in Physical Chemistry and is Director of the Centre for Computational Science (CCS), an Honorary Professor in Computer Science and a member of CoMPLEX at UCL. He is also the Coordinator of the VPH Network of Excellence (http://www.vph-noe.eu/)
8. Kings College London (U.K.):http://www.kcl.ac.uk/
Represented by Prof. Nicolas Smith, Head of the Biomedical Engineering Department whose research group focuses on the development of computational models of the heart with the capacity to integrate multiple measurement types. He is also Coordinator of the euHeart project (http://www.euheart.eu/)
9. Virtual Liver Network (DE):http://www.virtual-liver.de/
Represented by Adriano Henney, Program Director of the German Virtual Liver Network, a major national initiative funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research which aims to create a dynamic model that represents, rather than fully replicates, human liver physiology morphology and function, integrating quantitive data from all levels of organisation.
10. Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NO): http://www.ntnu.edu/
Represented by Stig W. Omholt, Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB) and
Director of the national core facility “Centre for Integrative Genetics” (CIGENE).
11. Saarland University (DE):http://www.uni-saarland.de/
Represented by Prof. Norbert Graf, the medical director of the Department for Pediatric Hematology and Oncology at the University Hospital of the Saarland and current Coordinator of the PMedicine project http://p-medicine.eu/
