Alison Lesley Marsden is an American

pediatric Pediatrics ( also spelled ''paediatrics'' or ''pædiatrics'') is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, paediatrics covers many of their youth until th ...

cardiologist Cardiology () is a branch of medicine that deals with disorders of the heart and the cardiovascular system. The field includes medical diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery disease, heart failure, valvular he ...

and bioengineer. She is the Douglass M. and Nola Leishman Professor of

cardiovascular disease Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a class of diseases that involve the heart or blood vessels. CVD includes coronary artery diseases (CAD) such as angina and myocardial infarction (commonly known as a heart attack). Other CVDs include stroke, ...

in the departments of Pediatrics (Cardiology), Bioengineering, and, by courtesy, Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. She is the daughter of Canadian-American mathematician

Jerrold E. Marsden Jerrold Eldon Marsden (August 17, 1942 – September 21, 2010) was a Canadian mathematician. He was the Carl F. Braun Professor of Engineering and Control & Dynamical Systems at the California Institute of Technology.. Marsden is listed as an ISI ...

Research

Marsden's research concerns the

biomechanics Biomechanics is the study of the structure, function and motion of the mechanical aspects of biological systems, at any level from whole organisms to organs, cells and cell organelles, using the methods of mechanics. Biomechanics is a branch ...

of the

cardiovascular system The blood circulatory system is a system of organs that includes the heart, blood vessels, and blood which is circulated throughout the entire body of a human or other vertebrate. It includes the cardiovascular system, or vascular system, tha ...

. It has included the development of accurate computer simulations of the

Berlin Heart Berlin Heart GmbH is a German company that develops, produces and markets ventricular assist devices (VADs). The devices mechanically support the hearts of patients with end-stage heart failure. Berlin Heart's products include the implantable IN ...

, an implantable artificial heart, with the aim of improving its design.

Education and career

Marsden earned a bachelor's degree in

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, ...

in 1998 from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

. She did her graduate studies in mechanical engineering at Stanford University, earning a master's degree in 2000 and completing her Ph.D. in 2005. After postdoctoral research in pediatric cardiology and bioengineering at Stanford, she taught at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

from 2007 until 2015, when she returned to Stanford as a faculty member.

Recognition

In 2018 Marsden became a fellow of the

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific soci ...

. She also became a fellow of the

American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) is a non-profit organization founded in 1991, and headquartered in Washington. It represents 50,000 medical and biomedical engineers, and academic institutions, private industry, ...

, "for fundamental contributions to cardiovascular simulation methodology, clinical translation of novel surgical designs, leadership in open-source software and gender diversity". In 2020 she was named a fellow of the American Physical Society "for the development of numerical methods for cardiovascular blood flow simulation and their application to cardiovascular surgery and congenital heart disease".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Marsden, Alison Living people American bioengineers Princeton University alumni Stanford University alumni Stanford University faculty Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Fellows of the American Physical Society 1976 births