The Center welcome Drs. Pamela Sowa and Aleksander Kielbik

Aleksander Kielbik, Olga Pakhomova and Pamela Sowa

Olga Pakhomova's experience training international students

The Frank Reidy Research Center for Bioelectrics has a long tradition training international students. Searching world-wide, the Center finds exceptional students who excel in their study of bioelectrics. Training international students often results in long lasting collaborations. Over the years our lab hosted students from France, China, Italy, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Poland. Their visit enriched the Center learning environment and cultural perspective. The training at the Center is an integral part of the student's educational program and it is typically sponsored by an agency in the student's home country. The training period is short, 6-7 months, and therefore must be intense to be productive. In my experience these collaborations resulted in many joint publications, prestigious awards, and joint grant applications. Our international visitors are involved in all Center activities, for instance they played a key role in organizing our latest Center retreat, see more ...

Organizational support is key to the success of these initiatives, and we are thankful for the exceptional work of the ODU International Office.

Drs. Pamela Sowa from Germany and Aleksander Kielbik from Poland are both physicians and joined our team in February 2022. We welcome them and look forward to working on two exciting new projects on cardiology and urology.

About Pamela Sowa and Aleksander Kielbik

Pamela received her medical doctor's degree in 2021 from Technical University (TU) Dresden in Germany. During the last three years, she was engaged in research in the Laboratory of Molecular and Experimental Cardiology at TU Dresden. In February 2022 she successfully completed her doctoral disputation in experimental cardiology with the title: "Impact of high-intensity interval training vs. moderate-intensity continuous training on HDL-function for patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF)".

She joined the Center for Bioelectrics in February 2022 as a J-1 scholar for short-term research (6 months). Her current scientific interests include the application of pulsed electric fields in cardiology. Pamela's research focuses on understanding the membrane repair mechanisms initiated by short nanosecond pulses in human cardiomyocytes with the aim of developing better electric pulse-based treatments for cardiac arrhythmias.

Aleksander graduated from Wroclaw Medical University in Poland in 2021. Like Pamela, Aleksander joined the Center for Bioelectrics on a J-1 scholar visa. His international training has been made possible by a scholarship from the Kosciuszko Foundation - The American Institution of Polish Culture. At the Frank Reidy Research Center, Aleksander studies the effects of short nanosecond electric pulses on urothelial cancer cells. Specifically, he investigates how urine affects the electric pulse treatment efficacy.

His training in the US is the result of the active collaboration between centers in Wroclaw and Norfolk and come after the successful experience with another student from Wroclaw Medical University, Olga Michel.

Aleksander chose the Center because "(it) is a world-leading institution engaged in developing technologies deploying short, high-voltage electric pulses. Its interdisciplinary and international environment together with the innovative community of scientists provide the best opportunity for conducting cutting edge research in bioelectrics".