Dr. Lena Kranold joined the School of Engineering at the University of Western Australia as Lecturer in September 2023. Her current research interests are in the fields of applied and computational electromagnetics, focused on biomedical applications, medical device development and MR implant safety and compatibility. She will be involved in the delivery of the Biomedical Engineering program at UWA and is conducting her research in collaboration with the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research.

Lena received the B.Eng. degree in Technology Management and Marketing, with a major in electrical engineering and minor in business administration, from the University of Applied Sciences Kiel, Germany, in 2013 and the M.Sc. degree in Electrical and Information Engineering from the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Germany, in 2015. She earned the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from McGill University, Canada, in 2020. Lena’s PhD research was about the design of a wearable system for breast health monitoring, including RF radar, antenna and antenna array design, developing a prototype system for breast screening, and conducting clinical trials.

From 2021 to 2023, Lena joined ETH Zurich and the IT’IS Foundation as postdoctoral researcher in applied medical electromagnetics. Her research included studying the interaction and safety of medical implants exposed to electromagnetic fields and waves. She was involved in several customized research projects, working with industry partners and implant manufacturers on studies for regulatory submissions in the field of MR implant safety. A major tool Lena uses in her research to study electromagnetic interactions with human anatomical models and biological tissues, as well as in her teaching, is the multi-physics simulation software Sim4Life (ZMT ZurichMedTech AG, Switzerland).

Since 2024, Lena serves on the Board of the BioEM Society, and is the trainee representative in the ISMRM MR Safety Study Group. Since 2023, she serves on the Technical Advisory Committee of URSI Comm K (International Union of Radio Science, Commission K Electromagnetics in Medicine and Biology). She was awarded the Arthur Pilla Young Scientist Award for her research at the BioEM 2023 Conference in Oxford, UK. Lena also served on the Board of Directors of IEEE Montreal Section for five years, as treasurer of the Women in Engineering Affinity Group (2017-2018) and as Vice-Chair of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Montreal Chapter (2019-2022).