Lea Rems is a Research Associate and Assistant Professor at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Electrical Engineering. She studies the interactions between electric fields and biological materials, focusing in particular on the phenomena related to cell membrane electroporation. She recieved her PhD in Electrical / Biomedical Engineering from the University of Ljubljana in 2016. She then continued postdoctoral training at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands (2016-2018) and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden (2018-2021). In 2021, she returned to the University of Ljubljana with a Maria Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship. She recently recieved an ERC Starting Grant for fundamental research on reversible and irreversible electroporation in cardiac cells and tissue in vitro, with the aim of extending electroporation to the field of cardiac gene therapy for the purpose of promoting cardiac regeneration after myocardial infarction. She also leads a Start-up Research Programme at the University, which is focused on modelling the electrophysiological response of cells and tissues to electroporation in silico. Her work has been recognized with several national and international awards, including the Alessandro Chiabrera Award for Excellence in Bioelectromagnetics (2021).
