Speaker Profile
Emilia Entcheva

Emilia Entcheva PhD

Healthcare Management
Washington, Dist of Col, United States of America

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Professor Emilia Entcheva is recognized for pioneering cardiac optogenetics - the genetically mediated light sensitization of heart cells and tissue to allow optical stimulation, imaging and control of their electrical activity. The goal of Prof. Entcheva’s laboratory (the Cardiac Optogenetics & Optical Imaging Laboratory) is to work out the biophysical limits of and develop the technological innovations needed for a fundamentally new highly-parallel framework for all-optical cardiac electrophysiology in vitro and in vivo. Guided by her lab's theoretical/computational work in the area of bioelectricity, they experimentally integrate, test and validate new optical modalities for actuation (stimulation), including optogenetics, and sensing (fluorescent and dye-free optical mapping) of the electromechanical function in cardiac cells and tissues. Their tools are particularly useful for mechanistic dissection of cardiac cell excitation, cell-cell communication and spatiotemporal phenomena like cardiac arrhythmias, in response to pharmacological, genetic or other manipulations, in lab-on-a-chip platforms, using single primary or stem-cell-derived cardiomyocytes and engineered tissues, as well as in vivo animal models. This is done in a high-throughput fashion not affordable by other methods.