Dr. Valentina Dargam is now a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at FIU—the same institution where she earned both her bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in biomedical engineering. She’s a Panther through and through, now shaping the next generation of scientists at the university that shaped her. Dr. Dargam’s research lies at the intersection of cardiovascular physiology and environmental health, focusing on noninvasive diagnostics and preclinical models to understand and prevent heart disease. She was named the Florida Heart Research Foundation’s Early Career “Stop Heart Disease” Researcher of the Year in 2022 and holds several U.S. patents for innovations in cardiac acoustics. Beyond the lab, she is a committed mentor and a leader in her community, dedicated to supporting and building up the next generation of aspiring scientists and engineers.
research interests
Dr. Dargam’s research investigates how cardiovascular remodeling and dysfunction arise from chronic diseases and environmental exposures. Her lab integrates preclinical mouse models, noninvasive diagnostics, and physiological measurements to identify early, low-cost markers of heart disease progression. During her doctoral work, she characterized how chronic kidney disease alters cardiac function and electrophysiology in a sex-specific manner, and she developed patented approaches to assess valve calcification using heart sounds. Her current research, supported by a Junior Faculty Grant from the Florida Heart Research Foundation, focuses on how varying doses and durations of lead and cadmium exposure affect cardiac and vascular remodeling. By identifying exposure thresholds that lead to hypertension and cardiac dysfunction, her work aims to improve cardiovascular risk assessment and prevention in populations facing environmental health risks.
