In this episode highlighting the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, we meet Elsje Pienaar, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering. We'll discuss her work to discover host-pathogen interactions through computational simulations.

Professor Eljse Pienaar shares about her experience using sophisticated computational models of systems pharmacology to help predict the effectiveness of drugs in a patient with hopes of accelerating drug development and offers advice to future biomedical engieers with an interest in her area of research.

Professor Pienaar earned her MS and PhD in chemical and biomolecular engineering from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and did postdoctoral work in microbiology, immunology and chemical engineering at the University of Michigan as well as at Linköping University, Sweden. Her laboratory uses computational simulations of within-host pathogen, immune and drug dynamics to optimize treatment of infectious diseases. Current projects in the lab include TB, HIV, non-tuberculous mycobacterial infections and Ebola virus dynamics.  Learn more by visiting Pienaar's lab website: Computational Systems Pharmacology Lab

This is one of three episodes featuring Purdue University's Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering.  Listen to more about Biomedical Engineering and other engineering topics at the Purdue Engineering podcast website.

Special thanks to Shruthi Suresh, our guest host for this podcast.  Shruthi is a PhD candidate at the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering with a Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship and was previously a Leslie Bottorff Fellow.  Her research focuses on using signal processing, machine learning and data science to help individuals with mobility and visual impairments. When not in the lab, Shruthi can be found out on a run or curled up reading a book.