INEB PROJECT SELECTED FOR EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY’S PROGRAM

A portuguese team have been selected for the 2014 "Spin Your Thesis!" program, promoted by ESA (European Space Agency).
This unique opportunity allow students to run their experiments in world-class gravitational facilities. The data contributes to their syllabus, PhD or Master’s theses.
The portuguese team is "The AngioGravity", and it is composed of three undergraduate students, Daniel Carvalho, Guilherme Aresta and Miguel Ferreira,of the Bioengineering Master degree from the University of Porto, and Raquel Almeida,PhD student in Bioengineering Systems from the MIT Portugal Program, under supervision of INEB researcher Pedro Granja.
Their study involves bioengineering. Specifically, they will investigate the ability of Endothelial Cells (ECs) to form blood vessels in hypergravity.

Spin Your Thesis! uses the Large Diameter Centrifuge facility located at ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. It is a hypergravity facility. At eight metres in diameter, this centrifuge can reproduce a gravitational force from 1 to 20 times the pull of Earth’s gravity.

Large Diameter Centrifuge facility located at ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands

ESA offers financial support to the selected teams to cover part of the cost of the experimental hardware, travel and accommodation.

This year is the fifth time that ESA will have run Spin Your Thesis!. The experiments will take place at ESTEC between 8 and 19 of September 2014.