Dr Patrizia Camelliti

Dr Patrizia Camelliti is an Imperial College Junior Research Fellow in the National Heart and Lung Institute. She is part of the Cellular Electrophysiology group at the Harefield Heart Science Centre.

She graduated in Biological Sciences from the University of Milan, Italy, in 2000. She then moved to the Department of Physiology, University of Oxford, to undertake a DPhil studying the structural and functional coupling of cardiac myocytes and fibroblasts, for which she was awarded the Blue Riband Prize of the UK Physiological Society. After completing her DPhil, Patrizia was awarded a 4 year JRF at Christ Church College Oxford and an EP Abraham Cephalosporin research grant, to pursue research at the interface between cardiac physiology and bioengineering.

In October 2010 Patrizia joined Imperial College as Junior Research Fellow, under the sponsorship of Dr Cesare Terracciano. Her research focuses on understanding the multicellular mechanisms involved in the remodelling of the heart with heart failure and in the reverse-remodelling which has been observed with left ventricular assist device support. She has recently developed a new experimental preparation – the human heart slice – that can be easily prepared from small biopsies obtained during cardiac surgery. She will apply this novel preparation to advance the limited electrophysiological, pharmacological and biochemical data currently available for the human heart, and to assess the response of human diseased myocardium to possible therapies. She is also interested in the role of fibroblasts in cardiac structure and function in the normal and diseased heart.

Patrizia is a review editor for Frontiers in Cardiac Electrophysiology, and a referee for Cardiovascular Research, Cell Biochemistry & Biophysics, Progress in Biophysics & Molecular Biology, Microscopy & Microanalysis, Experimental Physiology, Nature Protocols, and Pharmacology & Therapeutics. She is a member of the UK Physiological Society, the European Society of Cardiology and the Biophysical Society.

Patrizia is also involved in “public communication of science” and has exhibited one of her confocal images at The Royal Society of Arts’ Science Image Exhibition in London and has contributed to a children’s science book “Instructions for ME” (Magic World Media Edition).

Personal awards:

• 2010: Imperial College Junior Research Fellowship, Imperial College London.
• 2010: British Heart Foundation Reflections of Research image competition (finalist).
• 2008: Young Investigator Award, Working Group on Cardiac Cellular Electrophysiology Conference (Madrid, Spain).
• 2007: Poster of Excellence Award (2nd place), Gordon Research Conference, Cardiac Arrhythmia Mechanisms (Ventura, USA).
• 2006: Poster Presentation Award, Oxford Postdoc Network (Oxford, UK).
• 2005: Christ Church College JRF, Christ Church College, Oxford.
• 2005: British Heart Foundation Reflections of Research image competition (2nd place).
• 2003: Blue Riband Prize, The UK Physiological Society.
• 1998: Socrates/Erasmus Scholarship, University of Milan (to spend 6 months in the laboratory of Dr Allan Levi at the University of Bristol, UK).