Ellen Roche

Fulbrighter bridges industry and academia to engineer life-saving robotics.

Roche in a lab coat holding an anatomical heart model, seated at a desk with a computer showing medical scans.

Professor Ellen Roche, PhD, directs the Therapeutic Technology Design and Development Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As a biomedical engineer and entrepreneur, she has capitalized on her time in both academia and industry to start her own award-winning medical company, Spheric Bio. Roche and her MIT lab innovate through technologies such as soft robotics and 3D printing.

The medical devices she and her collaborators have already developed include soft robotics that can reduce inflammation around medical implants, prosthetic heart valves, and robotic cardiac sleeves that mechanically pump the heart. Roche’s hope is that these innovations will speed the development of a “hybrid tissue robotic heart replacement” that combines a patient’s own tissue with soft robotics as an alternative to a heart transplant.

Scientist and Roche collaborate at a laboratory bench, wearing lab coats and gloves. — *Roche (right) with a collaborator at Boston Children’s Hospital.*

Originally from Ireland, international collaboration has been a hallmark of Roche’s career. Roche says she is very “grateful for her experience” as a Fulbrighter, noting that the “opportunity allowed me to study at Harvard and pursue research in medical devices and eventually go on to start my own group at MIT to continue this work.” Having worked back and forth across the Atlantic, she considered it “an honor to be able to complete my PhD and start my own lab in the U.S.”

When she became a Fulbrighter, Roche had already completed her undergraduate degree at the National University of Ireland in Galway, a master’s degree in bioengineering at Trinity College in Dublin, additional coursework in medicine, and had benefited from working in the medical device industry in both the United States and Ireland. She worked at the Irish company Mednova and its sister company, Abbott Vascular, in California. There, she gained expertise developing cardiac medical devices such as heart stents and carotid filters for arteries. During her time at the American-Irish company Medtronic, working on replacement aortic valves, she saw a future for herself in research and decided to pursue a doctorate in the United States through Fulbright at Harvard University.

Advisor and Roche in academic regalia smiling outside with trees and a building in the background. — *Ellen Roche with her advisor and collaborator at Harvard, Dr. David Mooney.*

Through Fulbright, she found two advisors and a network of interdisciplinary collaborators in the Boston area: Dr. David Mooney, PhD, a faculty member from Harvard specializing in tissue engineering, and Dr. Conor Walsh, PhD, who focused on robotics at MIT. Bridging medical science and engineering, Roche, Mooney, Walsh, and collaborators at Boston Children’s Hospital developed the Harvard Ventricular Assist Device (HarVAD), a soft-robotic sleeve device to maintain the heart’s functionality. In another collaboration among MIT, Harvard, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Trinity College Dublin, the Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research (AMBER) Center, and National University of Ireland Galway, Roche and her teammates developed Therepi, a device that attaches to damaged heart tissue that can then be attached to a port to deliver medicines which can make the difference between patient recovery and heart failure. After completing her doctorate, Roche returned to Ireland for a postdoctoral fellowship at the National University of Ireland Galway before returning to Boston as a faculty member at MIT.

In an interview with MIT’s Mechanical Engineering department, Roche explained that her achievements in bioengineering are not something researchers in any one discipline can achieve working in isolation. “We need a concerted effort from many disciplines. We need to work with engineers, roboticists, tissue engineers, material scientists, surgeons, but I believe it’s possible.”

Roche explains how the Fulbright experience helped her make critical connections that have advanced her research and career. In addition to expanding her professional network, Fulbright allowed Roche to engage more deeply in the culture of the United States. She says “the Fulbright experience also enabled me to experience many U.S. cities . . . I made lifelong friends from 32 different countries.” Since her Fulbright, Roche notes that she has “hosted many Fulbright students in my lab and enjoy[s] speaking regularly at Fulbright events in Boston.”