AD 2018 Q1

RESEARCH, EDUCATION & MEDICINE
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Measuring
the Unknown
VIRGINIE PAPADOPOULOU PUSHES
THE LIMITS OF BUBBLE SCIENCE.
By Reilly Fogarty
Virginie Papadopoulou, Ph.D., is a diver,
researcher, former Marie Curie Fellow
and current R.W. Hamilton Grant
recipient who is quickly leaving her
mark on a century-old field. With
a background in theoretical physics
and gas physiology and a doctorate in bioengineering,
Papadopoulou is perfectly at home in the world of
academia. It was a love of diving, however, that drove
the native of Brussels, Belgium, to become one of the
world’s leading researchers in the field of bubble science.
At age 10 Papadopoulou was obsessed with mystery
novels and delighted in discovering the unknown
through critical thinking and hard work. One of her
favorite novels involved a thrilling adventure in an
underwater cave, and upon reading it she knew that
she wanted to become a diver. At 13 she convinced her
father to enroll her and her family in a Discover Scuba
course while on vacation at the Red Sea, and she began
to drag the family along on yearly diving adventures.
As her experience in the water increased, so did her
fascination with the science of dive medicine. When
Papadopoulou took a divemaster course through
her undergraduate program, she discovered that the
decompression science covered in the course held her
attention better than the theoretical physics she was
studying for her degree. The distractions from her
primary field of study compounded when a medical
imaging course introduced her to ultrasound imaging
technology, and she quickly shifted the focus of her
education and work toward decompression research
and echocardiography in diving medicine.
This research brought her to the lab of Mengxing
Tang, Ph.D., at Imperial College London, where
in short order she became an accomplished and
extensively published researcher. Concurrently, she
was part of PHYPODE — a European Commissionfunded
project of the Marie Curie Initial Training
Networks (ITN) initiative — where she worked under
the supervision of Costantino Balestra in Belgium
and effectively got a crash course in human diving
physiology. She also spent time in Greece collaborating
with Thodoris Karapantsios’ laboratory in Thessaloniki,
Greece, building a controlled system to record and
model real-time bubble formation from decompression
on different tissue surfaces.
Papadopoulou’s work has covered the breadth of the
diving industry and spread into the fields of health care
and disease treatment. Its focus, however, has always
been on bubble mechanics. Her published literature
covers topics and collaborations ranging from evaluating
decompression stress with bubble counts to heart rate
variability in skydivers to ultrasound-assisted delivery
of drugs to the brain. She is fluent in five languages;
an active dive instructor; a member of nearly a dozen
professional hyperbaric, space medicine and engineering
professional agencies; and has been recognized for her
work by the American Association for the Advancement
of Science (AAAS), the European Underwater and
Baromedical Society (EUBS), the University of North
Carolina, Imperial College London and others.
Currently a research assistant professor in the lab
of Paul A. Dayton, Ph.D., at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, Papadopoulou focuses her
KENNITA JOHNSON
50 | WINTER 2018