Maria Segarra-Queralt born on the 17th of April of 1996, is a biochemist at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. During her bachelor, her curiosity about bioinformatics began, and receiving an honour mention in this subject further encouraged her to pursue master's studies in computational biology. Specifically, by the end of 2018, she enrolled in the Computational Biomedical Engineering Master program of Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). Throughout the year, in the context of her master's thesis, she actively worked for the HOLOA project, a national project founded by Ministerio de Cienca, Innovacion y Universidades, in the SIMBIOsys group of BCN-MedTech (UPF). Recognizing her potential, her supervisor, Jérôme Noailly, endorsed her to pursue her Ph.D. in Communication and Information Technologies, in the branch of Systems Biology. In 2020, Maria received personal financial support through the Generalitat de Catalunya’s pre-doctoral grant FI (2020 FI B 00680), allowing her to actively work in the field of Mechanobiology. During her Ph.D. she contributed as first author to national and international conferences. 

 

Specifically, she presented 7 posters and she got 11 podium presentations. Moreover, she contributed as a coauthor in the methodology and in the editing of 11 abstracts that were further accepted for poster (6) and podium (5) presentations. To date she has published four insightful papers (e.g., 10.1038/s41598- 022-07776-, 10.3389/fbioe.2023.1006066 and https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2024.02.003, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-62212-x). Maria combined her research with teaching, student co-supervision of master’s and bachelor’s thesis, experimental work at KU Leuven and organizing research initiatives at UPF. Finally, Maria obtained the maximum degree of Excellence on November 22th 2023 in her Ph.D dissertation, along with the International Mention.

In February 2024, she joined PhySense as a postdoctoral researcher in the context of the European project GEMINI (101136438) to deal with the biological details of device-related thrombus in atrial fibrillation (AF) patients. A growing number of AF patients face clinical contraindications to OACs, primarily due to bleeding risks and unexpected drug interactions, thus left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) with a medical occluder is an appealing alternative as most of the thrombi can be found in this cavity of the left atria. However, a certain number of LAAOs are related to device-related thrombus post-implantation. Controversially, patients are prescribed under OACs to reduce DRT risk. Predicting in advance the best OAC doses could significantly reduce adverse drug effects, improving AF patient monitoring after surgical intervention of the left atrial appendage, and potentially reducing the risk of DRT.