West Yorkshire. Leeds. United Kingdom.

Virginia Pensabene is an Associate Professor in Associate Professor in Electronics and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Leeds.

She graduated in 2004 in Electronic Engineering from the University of Pisa and hold a PhD in Humanoid Technologies from the University of Genova and the Italian Institute of Technology.
In 2003 she founded a successful medical start-up (WinMedical, www.winmedical.com) and served as CEO for 2 years.
She was Exchange Researcher at the Department of Life Science Medicine Bioscience of TWIns, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan in 2008, working on ultrathin polymeric films for biomedical applications.
She then worked as Postdoctoral Research Associate and as Research Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University, Nashville (TN, USA) from 2011 to 2016, where she started her research in the field of organ-on-a-chip and developed models of the blood brain barrier, of the human endometrium and of the foetal membranes for reproductive toxicology studies.
In this framework, she was sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Veterans Affairs,.
Her research is focused now in Leeds on integrated microfluidic devices to develop organ-on-a-chip models of reproductive organs and has been sponsored by the European Research Council, by UK national research councils (UKRI, MRC, EPSRC, Wellcome Trust and NC3Rs).
She is interested in the pathophysiology of infertility and pregnancy failure, and she uses her engineering background to develop enabling technologies (such microfluidic tools and sensors) for IVF and ART.