National award for Southampton postdoc

Post doctoral researcher Dario Carugo has won a top award for the best medical engineering PhD thesis, beating students from UK and overseas universities.

He received the Medimaton Prize at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London for his work Development of biomimetic microfluidic systems for studying therapeutic embolisation mechanisms.

Dario, who now works with the Bioengineering Sciences and Electromechanical Engineering research groups, built a micro-engineered model of blood vessels in the human body (microvasculature system) to investigate the flow behaviour of cells and drug delivery systems. In particular, he was interested in understanding the mechanisms of artery blockages (embolisation) and combined drug release (chemo-embolisation), as a therapeutic route for the treatment of tumours. He also developed a computer simulation of the process.

Dario studied for his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Politecnico di Milano (Milan, Italy) before enrolling at Southampton for his PhD.