Every year during the VPH Summer School, one of our student members has the opportunity to get recognized for their research with the Best Poster award, just as PhD student Sofia Tseranidou has been awarded during the 2022 edition for her poster on “Nucleus pulposus cell network modelling in early intervertebral disc degeneration”.
Sofia Tseranidou obtained her bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics and Physical Sciences at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in 2017, while at the same time completed her internship at the Onassis Cardiac Centre of Athens. In 2020 she received her master’s degree in Computational Biomedical Engineering at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) with a thesis on the mechanobiology of the intervertebral disc cartilage endplate.
She is currently member of the Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC) in UPF under Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions grant in the Disc4all project.
Her research focuses on the multiscale modelling of the mechanism that takes part during intervertebral disc regulation, through the dynamics of the cell activity and how it contributes to the tissue turnover to specific regions of interest, by modelling and simulating bottom-up processes of tissue regulation. The results might help the biomedical field by enhancing patients’ general well-being suffering from low back pain (LBP).
"I feel so proud and happy for winning the VPHi Best Poster Award in my first ever poster. Recognition of my last years' hard work is what drives me to continue with passion and belief in myself and in my scientific vision."
Her poster showed how it is possible to build a regulatory network model for nucleus pulposus cells in early intervertebral disc degeneration by integrating all the existing knowledge in order to tackle critical biochemical interactions in in vitro diagnostic regulation.
We wish Sofia the best of luck for her future career, keep up the good work!
