David Marlevi awarded the ERC Starting Grant for project on multiscale imaging of cardiovascular pressure gradients
We congratulate David Marlevi at the Clinical Physiology Research Group, Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, who is one of three researchers at Karolinska Institutet to be awarded the European Research Council's prestigious ERC Starting Grant 2022.
The purpose of the ERC Starting Grants is to support outstanding and talented early-career scientist, with a particular focus on research of a pioneering nature. David Marlevi is now awarded EUR 1.6 million over a period of five years for his project, called MultiPRESS.
“I am extremely grateful and proud of the Starting Grant from the ERC. It will give us a fantastic opportunity to find out more about blood pressure changes through previously inaccessible parts of the cardiovascular system. The grant will also give us the opportunity to explore how blood pressure changes can predict early disease in various vulnerable patient groups, such as heart failure and stroke”, says David Marlevi.
“The long-term and extensive support that ERC means is extremely important to be able to explore this type of more challenging, translational research, with the hope of direct clinical impact at the end of the project”, he continues.
David Marlevi, researcher in medical imaging, joined clinical physiology and Karolinska Institutet in autumn 2021 after previously working as a postdoctoral fellow in cardiovascular imaging at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, USA.
Project title: Multiscale imaging of cardiovascular pressure gradients – a paradigm shift in hemodynamic risk prediction (MultiPRESS)
Summary: Estimating regional changes in blood pressure is critical for diagnosis, treatment planning, and risk prediction for many cardiovascular diseases. Still, for many disease types, non-invasive assessment is obstructed by inherent method limitations, leaving many instances where regional blood pressure changes remains unexplored.
The MultiPRESS main objective is to develop a novel imaging paradigm for non-invasive assessment of cardiovascular pressure changes, overcoming critical limitations of existing techniques through a unique multiscale approach. Through deep integration of advanced magnetic resonance imaging (4D Flow MRI), super-resolution networks, and physics-informed image processing, MultiPRESS will enable accurate extraction of blood pressure changes through previously inaccessible domains, tackling urgent clinical challenges across the heart, aorta, and brain.
The European Research Council Starting Grant (ERC StG) aims at supporting up-and-coming research leaders, who are building their research teams and are on their way to establish their own line of research. In all, the European Research Council will support 408 early-career researchers with this prestigious grant. The researchers included in the programme are awarded up to EUR 1.5 million over a five-year period. In total, the ERC in this year’s call will invest EUR 636 million in young research leaders around the world.