Franca Schmid is a Group Leader at the ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research at the University of Bern. After obtaining her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at ETH Zurich in 2017, she deepened her biological expertise through a postdoc at the University of Zurich and a research visit at the Brain and Spine Institute in Paris in 2023. She develops computational methods to understand the brain’s energy supply during health and disease. Her models are applicable to realistic vascular structures and address questions that go beyond what is accessible in biomedical imaging. The most recent foci of her team are on microvascular oxygen transport and ischemic strokes. Contributing to her ultimate goal of improving the diagnosis and treatment of neurological disorders and, thereby, maintaining healthy brain function in an aging population.