Dr Papadopoulou is a physicist by background and received her PhD in Bioengineering in 2016 from Imperial College London. She became a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNC Chapel Hill in 2017, where her research aims to bridge the different areas dealing with bubbles and ultrasound. Her current interests lie in: a) refining the imaging and analysis of ultrasonically detected decompression emboli in the context of decompression sickness; b) using oxygen microbubbles to modulate tumor hypoxia and improve radiotherapy; and c) enhancing topical drug-delivery using phase-change contrast agents, most recently in the context of chronic wound biofilm infections. Her work has resulted in 36 journal papers, over 95 conference presentations and 17 invited presentations to date. She has been awarded the 2017 Divers Alert Network/Bill Hamilton Memorial Grant by the Women Divers Hall of Fame, the 2020 Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Young Scientist Award, as well as the title of Divers Alert Network Scholar since 2018, for her on-going work creating a dynamic ultrasonic assessment of decompression bubbles. She serves as the Principal Investigator (PI) of two US Department of Defense grants by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), one of which is a STEM project aiming to support graduate students focused on optimizing human performance in extreme environments, as well as a research foundation grant from the Divers Alert Network (DAN) and a North Carolina Biotechnology Center (NCBC) commercialization potential grant, currently mentoring one postdoctoral student, two graduate students and four undergraduates. She is also co-Investigator and lead scientist with PI Prof. Dayton of a National Institute of Health (NIH) R01 grant and another NCBC translation grant, as well as UNC PI for a new industrial-academic collaboration funded by the ONR.
