Ricardo Armentano

Ricardo Luis Armentano Feijoo (born 3 August 1957) is an Uruguayan professor and researcher who has worked in biomedical engineering and cardiovascular systems.

He currently serves as the director of the GIBIO research group at the National Technological University — Buenos Aires Regional Faculty (Argentina).

Also he is the director of the Department of Biological Engineering, University of the Republic (Uruguay).

He has two doctoral degrees, two post-doctoral degrees, and has authored more than 300 research articles and 20 books/book chapters.

Prof. Ricardo Armentano has done thorough and remarkable work in the field of Engineering in Biology and Medicine from its theoretical fundamentals to its application in clinical practice, throughout a conscious-technology approach with humanistic motivation and global vision.

The originality of his approaches has led him to achieve two PhD degrees: the first one in Physiological Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires, and the second one in Biomechanics from the University of Paris Denis Diderot VII with the highest qualifications.

Given that poverty, malnutrition and environmental degradation may increase the propensity to cardiovascular diseases, Professor Armentano focused his works to model cardiovascular dynamics in these high-risk groups.

He has dedicated a considerable amount of time throughout his career to set up and train a research group, aware of the importance of an adequate working environment over final results.

He created a team consisting of young students, engineers, medical doctors, physicists, mathematicians and other specialists and centered his attention on human resources to spread out his latest advances and potentially increase the whole research line motivation.

Professor Armentano has created and directed the seasonal school ¨Modeling in Biomechanics and Mechanobiology¨ for graduate students, early stage researchers and practitioners with organized opportunities to build communities with professors from many countries and established practitioners and engage in hands-on tutorials in Biomechanics and Mechanobiology at the School of Engineering of Buenos Aires University.

Dr. Ricardo Armentano received his Electronic Engineer degree in 1984.

Two years before graduation, he won the competition for a pregraduate fellowship at the Department of Biomedical Engineering of the Favaloro Foundation, to develop equipment for biomedical research.

There he received intensive training in Biomedical Instrumentation and modeling of biological systems at the school of Engineering of the University of Buenos Aires.

In 1984 he became an Independent Investigator at the Research and Teaching Department of the Favaloro Foundation, and in 1986 he obtained a research fellowship granted by the INSERM (France) – CONICET (Argentina) Cooperation Agreement to investigate in Arterial Mechanics at l’Unité 28 de l’Institut de la Santé et la Recherche Medicale, in the Centre de Médicine Préventive Cardiovasculaire, Hôpital Broussais, Paris, France, under the direction of Dr. Jaime Levenson.

In 1988 he was granted a 4-month INSERM scholarship as Invited Investigator at Unité 263, INSERM, of the Unité de Recherches Biomathématiques et Bioestatistiques de l’Université Paris VII, under the direction of Professor Nguyen Phong Chau, where he specialized in Biomathematics and Biostatistics.

Between 1990 and 1993, supported by the INSERM – CONICET Cooperation Agreement, he traveled regularly to Paris, where he developed the Constitutive Equation of the Arterial Wall, which allows to follow-up the alterations of the diverse structural components of the arterial wall during the course of different arterial diseases.

This model was successfully validated in animals and then widely applied in humans.

In 1992 he was the invited speaker at the Official Course of Specialization in Cardiology at both the University of Buenos Aires and the Universidad del Salvador in Buenos Aires.

In the Federative Republic of Brazil, he was invited speaker of a doctoral course in Cardiovascular Dynamics in Biomedical Engineering at the University Hospital of the Federal University of Santa Catarina.

During the same year, he was invited speaker and he acted as Member of Doctoral Thesis Examination Board at the Ëcole Centrale de Arts et Metiers de Paris by Prof Jean E Morell.

In the same year he was appointed Professor at the University Institute of Biomedical Sciences of the Favaloro Foundation.

In 1993 he participated as Invited Researcher at the INSIBIO (Superior Institute of Biomedical Engineering) under the direction of Dr. Eng. Máximo E. Valentinuzzi of the National University of Tucumán, Argentina.

During the same year, he returned, transitorily, to his native country (no se sabe cuál es) as a member of the PEDECIBA (United Nations Program for the Development of Basic Sciences), within the project URU/84/002 of the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Universidad de la República.

As a member of the PEDECIBA he was assigned the maximum category: Grade 5 Investigator.

In 1994 he was appointed Principal Investigator of the Basic Science Research Institute of the Favaloro Foundation, and since then he is the leader of the Arterial System Dynamics Project, to which he has dedicated most of his efforts.

By the end of 1994 he qualified as Doctor of the University of Buenos Aires in Physiological Sciences, under the direction of Dr. Mario Parisi, with the highest qualification (excellent), and started his studies to develop a doctoral thesis in Physics at the Université Denis Diderot.

He was granted a fellowship at the Centre International des Etudiants et Stagiaires to carry out research in the Laboratoire de Biorhelogie et Hydrodynamique Physicoquimique, CNRS, URA 343, under the direction of Dr. Patrice Flaud.

To continue his investigations, he received grants from Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris VI, and later (1997) from Fondation Biologia et Naturalia of Paris.

In 1998 he won the competition for a Professorship position in Fluids Mechanics in Bioingineering at the School of Engineering of Buenos Aires University, and was appointed Director of the Department of Electronics at the Favaloro University.

In this University, he was a member of the Superior Council and President of the Council of Research and Development.

In 1999 he obtained the Degree of Docteur de l’Université de Paris VII Denis Diderot, for the Doctorat de Biomecanique: Mecanique de Systèmes Biologiques, under the direction of Dr. Patrice Flaud, with the highest qualification: Très Honorable avec Felicitations du Jury.

He was a fellow of the Clemente Stable Fund (CONICYT) for a postdoctoral position at the school of Medicine, University of the Republic.

Area of knowledge: Quantitative Physiology, Cardiovascular Hemodynamics (2002-2003)

In 2003 he was appointed Dean of the School of Engineering and Exact and Natural Sciences of Favaloro University.

In December 2004 he was selected as researcher class 1 by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Technology of the República Argentina.

In October 2005 he was designated Director of the PhD program on signal processing of the National Technological University of Buenos Aires.

In 2008 he has been honored with a senior fellowship of the Ville de Paris for French post doctoral researchers in Paris city laboratories supervised by Prof. Alain Simon.

Professor Armentano is a visiting professor at Institut Jean le Rond d'Alembert Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris France and at the Politechnic University, Madrid Spain.

He has been elected Co-Chair Global of the Citizen Safety and Security working group of the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE).

Dr. Ricardo Armentano has participated in more than 100 international scientific congresses with a total of 300 published abstracts, has given more than 130 conferences, has published more than 200 scientific papers in peer-reviewed international journals and more than 30 book chapters.