Professor Alex Frangi

Profile

Prof Alejandro (Alex) Frangi obtained his undergraduate degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the Technical University of Catalonia (Barcelona) in 1996. He pursued his PhD in Medicine at the Image Sciences Institute of the University Medical Centre Utrecht University on model-based cardiovascular image analysis. Prof Frangi is Diamond Jubilee Chair in Computational Medicine at the University of Leeds, UK, with joint appointments at the Schools of Computing and Medicine.

He leads the Centre for Computational Imaging and Simulation Technologies in Biomedicine. He is also a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies, Visiting Professor at KU Leuven, Belgium, and was awarded a Presidential International Fellowship Award by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 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 and General Chair of MICCAI 2018 held in Granada, Spain. He is also General Chair of IPMI 2023, to be held in Patagonia, Argentina. Prof Frangi is Chair of the Editorial Board of the MICCAI-Elsevier Book Series (2017-2020) and serves as Associate Editor of IEEE Trans on Medical Imaging, Medical Image Analysis, SIAM Journal Imaging Sciences, Computer Vision and Image Understanding journals. Prof Frangi was a foreign member of the Review College of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC, 2006-10) in the UK, received the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Early Career Award in 2006, the ICT Knowledge Transfer Prize (2008) and two Teaching Excellence Prizes (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 Politècnica Superior. He was awarded the ICREA-Academia Prize by the Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA) in 2008. Prof Frangi is an IEEE Fellow (2014), EAMBES Fellow (2015), SPIE Fellow (2020), SIAM Member, MICCAI Member, and was elected member to the Board of Directors of the Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Interventions (MICCAI) Society (2014-2018). Prof Frangi served in the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Institute for Biomedical Imaging Research (EIBIR) and Chair of the Fellows Committee of the IEEE EMBS (2017-2018). Under his leadership, CISTIB develops GIMIAS (Graphical Interface for Medical Image Analysis and Simulation) (www.gimias.org), an open-source platform for rapidly developing pre-commercial software prototypes in the areas of image computing and image-based computational physiology modelling, and MULTI-X (Health Data Analytics and Modelling As a Service Platform) (www.multi-x.org), a cloud-based platform for computational phenomics, in silico medicine, and silico clinical trials. The research and development conducted in his research group led to two spin-off companies (Clintelis SA 2009 and GalgoMedical SA 2013).

Responsibilities

• Director, CISTIB Centre for Computational Imaging and Simulation Technologies in Biomedicine
• Scientific Director, Centre for HealthTech Innovation
• Director of Research and Innovation, Leeds Institute for Data Analytics

Research interests

Prof Frangi is Diamond Jubilee Chair in Computational Medicine at the University of Leeds, UK, with joint appointments at the Schools of Computing and Medicine. He is also Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies, focusing on Precision Computational Medicine for In Silico Trials of Medical Devices. He conducts research in computational medical imaging and computational image-based medicine. He is interested in developing fundamental image analysis and modelling methods, medical image registration and reconstruction, statistical shape modelling, and machine-learning and deep-learning approaches to the previous goals. The broad objectives of his research program are: (i) develop intelligent systems to deal with the analysis of large-scale complex and multimodal data where imaging plays a central role, (ii) develop new approaches to integrate mechanistic and phenomenological imaging-linked models. He is also interested in new approaches to incorporate models and priors into data-driven approaches to retain the benefits from its ability to deal with complex data while controlling their expressivity and making them practical in problems constrained by data availability.

Qualifications

• BEng/MSc Telecommunications Engineering, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
• PhD Imaging Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Professional memberships

• IEEE Fellow
• SPIE Fellow
• MICCAI Fellow
• EAMBES Fellow
• SIAM Member

Student education

I seek proactive and talented junior and senior researchers with a proven track record of publications in leading international journals and conferences. Candidates for PhD positions must hold an MSc degree and have expertise in the area of interest. Background or strong interest in biomedical engineering and proficiency in spoken and written English is essential.
I am interested in individuals with excellent communication and leadership skills, with the ability to work in a multidisciplinary and international team, contributing to the visibility of the centre in the international scientific community. The ability to interact with other disciplines is essential. The ideal candidate will cooperate with members of CISTIB working on related topics as well as with our collaborators at several academic institutions in the UK and Europe.

Research groups and institutes

• Multidisciplinary Cardiovascular Research Centre
• Cardiac Physiology
• Cardiometabolic
• Leeds Institute of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine
• Leeds Institute of Clinical Trials Research