Massimiliano Leoni, Johann Radon Institute für Computational and Applied Mathematics (RICAM) der ÖAW, wird für sein Paper Blood flow but not cannula positioning influences the efficacy of Veno-Venous ECMO therapy, Sci Rep 12, 20950 (2022), ausgezeichnet.
Massimiliano received his Bachelor's and Master's degree from Politecnico di Milano in Italy.
He's since been leveraging the pretext of a PhD and a postdoc to travel the world, which took him to the most disparate institutions, such as the California Institute of Technology, the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics, the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, the Auckland Bioengineering Institute and, not last and not least, the Radon Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics.
The underlying interest to his research activity is medicine but, being a mathematician rather than a medical doctor, he could only pursue it by dragging mathematics down from its ivory tower and getting his hands dirty with meshes, code and Finite Elements.
The realms in which this approach turned out the be the most effective include the simulation and study of Cardiac Radiofrequency Ablation and, more relevant to this award, Extra-Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation. The latter is a clinical procedure with which patients experiencing lung failure are connected to an artificial lung that provides oxygen. The efficiency of the oxygen delivery, or lack thereof, and its causes are a matter of great debate in clinical practice, a debate that Massimiliano and his collaborators nudged in the right direction with a study, based on Computer simulations, of the actual blood and oxygen delivery to the heart and the causes of its limitations.
The results show that the anecdotal knowledge accumulated through clinical practice only partly agrees with what the equations suggest, instead pointing into a different direction that will potentially improve the procedure in terms of both efficiency and effectiveness.
Massimiliano is a mathematician and computer scientist from a small city in northern Italy.
He has a visceral rejection of being bored, which is why he has built up an arsenal of hobbies for any occasion, ranging from scuba diving to tennis, from skiing to travelling, from chess to languages, from martial arts to 3D printing. His favourite couch buddies are his Kindle and his list of pop-sci YouTube channels.