Virginia Tech professor named as engineering fellow

Raffaella De Vita joins American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows

Published February 16, 2021 by Sydney Lake

Raffaella De Vita. Photo courtesy Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech announced Monday that biomedical engineering and mechanics professor Raffaella De Vita has been elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows.

The institute’s membership includes more than 2,000 fellows who are recognized leaders in the medical and biological fields. De Vita has been with Virginia Tech since 2006 as a visiting professor and since 2007 as a full-time faculty member. She is the associate department head and the director of the Soft Tissue Research: Experiments, Theory and Computation by Hokies (STRETCH) Lab. De Vita conducts research on characterizing the mechanical properties of soft biological systems.

In 2012, De Vita earned the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and in 2017 received the Alumni Award for Outreach Excellence from Virginia Tech. In 2013 and 2019 she received the Excellence in Access and Inclusion Award.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from University of Naples II and her master’s degree and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh.