Sandra Rugonyi is a tenured professor of biomedical engineering at the OHSU School of Medicine. In 1995, she earned her degree in Nuclear Engineering from Instituto Balseiro (Balseiro Institute), Argentina, one of the most prestigious research centers in Latin America. In 1999, she earned her M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and went on to complete her Ph.D., also in Mechanical Engineering, from MIT. From 2001-2005, Dr. Rugonyi held a postdoctoral fellowship at OHSU, after which she became an assistant professor of Biomedical Engineering at OHSU. In 2011, she was promoted to the rank of associate professor, and in 2017 she was promoted to the rank of full professor with tenure.

Dr. Rugonyi's main research interests include are on cardiovascular mechanics: how blood flow influences the heart and vessel tissues leading to a healther environment or disease. She is particularly interested in the application of finite element methods and other numerical techniques, as well as imaging and image analyses, to quantify and visualize the response of cardiovascular tissues to blood flow conditions. Dr. Rugonyi's current research projects involve investigating the effects of blood flow on heart development, congenital heart disease, aortic anuerysms, and vein biomechanics.