Role:
Director
Short key CV:
Alejandro (Alex) Frangi was born in La Plata, Argentina. In 1991 he moved to Barcelona, Spain, where he obtained his undergraduate degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the Technical University of Catalonia (Barcelona) in 1996. He subsequently carried out research on electrical impedance tomography for image reconstruction and noise characterization at the same institution under a CIRIT grant. In 1997 he obtained a grant from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs to pursue his PhD at the Image Sciences Institute (www.isi.uu.nl) of the University Medical Center Utrecht on model-based cardiovascular image analysis. During this period he was visiting researcher at the Imperial College in London, UK, and in Philips Medical Systems BV, The Netherlands.
Dr Frangi is Professor of Biomedical Image Computing at the University of Sheffield (USFD), Sheffield, UK. Before, he was Associate Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and ICREA-Academia Researcher (www.icrea.cat). He currently leads the Center for Computational Imaging & Simulation Technologies in Biomedicine (www.cistib.org). CISTIB is part of INSIGNEO Institute for in silico Medicine, a joint initiative between USFD and the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust to realise the scientific ambition behind the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH), producing a transformational impact on healthcare. His main research interests are in medical image computing, medical imaging and image-based computational physiology.
Prof Frangi has been principal investigator or scientific coordinator of over 20 national and European projects, both funded by public and private bodies. During 1/2006-3/2010 he was coordinator of the @neurIST (www.aneurist.org), a European Integrated Project, during 1/2006-12/2009 he was scientific co-PI for the Spanish CENIT Technology Platform CDTEAM (www.cdteam.org) funded with by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through CDTI, in 2009-2012 he took part of the euHeart (www.euheart.eu) Integrated Project, in 2009-2012 in the Virtual Physiological Human Network of Excellence (www.VPH-noe.eu), and in 2009-2012 he was Scientific Coordinator of the CENIT Technology Platform cvREMOD (www.cvremod.com) funded with by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through CDTI. He recently was awarded a funding from the European Commission as coordinator entitled VPH-DARE@IT DementiA Research Enabled by IT (www.vph-dare.eu), led by the University of Sheffield together with other 19 European organizations.
Prof Frangi has edited a book, published 6 editorial articles and over 125 journal papers in key international journals of his research field and more than over 170 book chapters and international conference papers with an h-index 25 and an average number of citations per paper over 15.9 according to ISI WoK. He has been three times Guest Editor of special issues of IEEE Trans Med Imaging, one on IEEE Trans Biomed Eng, and one of Medical Image Analysis journal. He was chair of the 3rd International Conference on Functional Imaging and Modelling of the Heart (FIMH05) held in Barcelona in June 2005, Publications Chair of the IEEE International Symposium in Biomedical Imaging (ISBI 2006), Programme Committee Member of various editions of the Intl. Conf. on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Interventions (MICCAI) (Brisbane, AU, 2007; Beijing CN, 2010; Toronto CA 2011; Nice FR 2012; Nagoya JP 2013), International Liaison of ISBI 2009, Tutorials Co-Chair of MICCAI 2010, and Program Co-chair of MICCAI 2015. He was also General Chair for ISBI 2012 held in Barcelona.
Prof Frangi is Associate Editor of IEEE Trans on Medical Imaging, Medical Image Analysis, SIAM Journal Imaging Sciences, Computer Vision and Image Understanding, Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering: Imaging & Visualization and Recent Patents in Biomedical Engineering journals. Prof Frangi was foreign member of the Review College of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC, 2006-10) in the UK, is a recipient of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Early Career Award in 2006, the Prizes for Knowledge Transfer (2008) in the Information and Communication Technologies domain and of Teaching Excellence (2008, 2010) by the Social Council of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He also was awarded the UPF Medal (2011) for his service as Dean of the Escuela Politecnica Superior. He was awarded the ICREA-Academia Prizes awarded by the Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avancats (ICREA) in 2008. Finally, Prof Frangi is IEEE Fellow (2014), SPIE Member, SIAM Member, MICCAI Member, and elected member to the Board of Directors of the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Interventions (MICCAI) Society (2014-2018). Prof Frangi has been selected as a Highly Cited Researcher in the field of Engineering by Thomson Reuters having 3 highly cited papers according to the Essential Science Indicators by the same organisation.
Under his leadership, CISTIB develops GIMIAS (Graphical Interface for Medical Image Analysis and Simulation, www.gimias.org), an open-source platform for the rapid development of pre-commercial software prototypes in the areas of image computing and image-based computational physiology modelling. The research and development conducted in his research group led to two spin-off companies (Clintelis S.A. 2009 and GalgoMedical S.A. 2013).