Francesco Viola is Professor of Fluid Mechanics at Gran Sasso Science Institute, L'Aquila, working on multi-physics computational models that bridge engineering, physics and medicine. In his research, he combines numerics, experiments and theory to rationalize the physics at play in problems arising in natural and laboratory settings. Viola has applied immersed boundary methods to create a computational model of the whole human heart, which is currently exploited within the ERC-StG CARDIOTRIALS to investigate cardiac pathologies and optimize medical devices.