Raoul van Loon
Swansea University
Welsh Crucible 2011
Raoul obtained his BSc and MSc in mechanical engineering at University of Technology in Eindhoven. His dissertation project was on the swelling behaviour of intervertebral discs. After this taster in biomedical engineering he decided to complete a PhD on modelling of the aortic valve in the bioengineering department at the same university. The strong emphasis on blood flow in this project led him to pursue his career as a post-doctoral researcher in the aeronautics department at Imperial College London. During this period his research focused on modelling techniques on the one hand and the development of a bioreactor for tissue engineered heart valves with the Heart Science Centre in Harefield on the other hand. Currently Raoul is an RCUK fellow and lecturer in computational biomedical engineering at Swansea university. He now uses his computational models to improve the understanding of valvular disease in close collaboration with the Cardiac Centre at Morriston Hospital.
Raoul has been promoted to Associate Professor in the College of Engineering at Swansea University.