Alessondra Speidel

About Alessondra

(updated 6/2016) Alessondra Speidelis interested in the intersections of research, engineering, commercialization and policy in a medical context. As a Luce Scholar, Allie is placed with the Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science at  Tokyo Women’s Medical University, in Tokyo, Japan , working on cell sheet technology with Dr. Tatsuya Shimizu and Dr. Jun Kobayashi.  She has recently obtained her Ph.D. degree on heart regeneration at Imperial College London. Her Ph.D. project, funded by the Marshall Scholarship and Rosetrees Trust, explored strategies for imaging, understanding and improving heart tissue regeneration after heart injury. Allie graduated with Distinction in Biomedical Engineering and a Howard G. Clark Award for excellence in research from Duke University, obtaining a B.S.E. in Biomedical Engineering and a minor in Chemistry in 2011.  As a Pratt Fellow at Duke, she published her research on the optimization of drug delivery methods, focusing on how cells respond to their surface environments. Through her immersive Collegiate Athletic Premedical Experience (CAPE) internship shadowing various surgical, clinical, and laboratory medicine professionals at the Duke University Medical Center, she fostered and developed her interest in medicine.  Outside of her academic work, she was a Baldwin Scholar, freelance SAT tutor and college application consultant, Duke University peer tutor, Imperial College student union steward and bar staff member, Ph.D. Department committee member, Biomedical Young Entrepreneurs Scheme’s best healthcare business plan winner, and member of the Duke Varsity Swim Team.