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From Chisinau to the Artificial Heart Lab

Vlad Onceanu’s Journey and Hands-On Review of the Hydrix LUDO

When you first meet Vlad Onceanu, you don’t immediately see “total artificial heart systems engineer” written on his forehead.

You might hear him talk about a new recipe he’s experimenting with, a co-op game he’s playing with friends, or his next hiking route in the mountains. But behind that calm, friendly presence is one of the sharpest engineering minds we’ve had in the MAVIS Artificial Heart team.

Vlad, originally from Chișinău, Moldova, was one of the founding members of our student team. For three intense years, he helped turn “the most advanced artificial heart” from sketches and ideas into working prototypes on the bench.

Today, he’s taken that mission even further: he is now a PhD student in heart surgery, focusing on pediatric artificial hearts, and a full-time biomedical engineer at the startup Cardiovascular Engineering.

This is the story of Vlad, the MAVIS lab, and his hands-on review of the Hydrix LUDO controller – a platform that has quietly become one of our most strategic tools in artificial heart R&D. 

Vlad at MAVIS lab

Our collaboration with Hydrix is tied to one of the most intense learning environments you can imagine: HeartHackathon. With Hydrix as one of the sponsors of the competition, the MAVIS Artificial Heart team went on to win the “Most Advanced Design” award two years in a row: Dallas, USA, 2023 & Utsunomiya, Japan, 2024.

Those experiences forced us to move fast, iterate aggressively, and build systems that weren’t just clever on paper, but actually worked.

  Back in our lab in Iași, one of the key tools that allowed us to keep this momentum was the Hydrix LUDO – a powerful motor controller platform we integrated into our R&D workflow for ventricular assist devices and total artificial heart (TAH) concepts. Vlad led much of this work. Here’s how he describes the LUDO in real life, not in a spec sheet.

Ana, Vlad & LUDO at Expo Osaka 2025

HeartHackathon, Hydrix, and a Controller That Travels With Us

1. Hardware Integration: True Plug-and-Play for Rapid Prototyping

In early R&D, we live in a constant cycle of “print – assemble – test – modify – repeat.” Pumps change, motors change, wiring changes. According to Vlad, one of the biggest advantages of the Hydrix LUDO is how it handles this chaos:

 The hardware is genuinely plug-and-play. We frequently swap pump iterations and motor types, and the LUDO handles these changes without requiring a full system overhaul.

3. Precision, Stability, and Data You Can Actually Use

 For a student-driven team, this isn’t a luxury – it’s survival. Every hour saved on setup is an extra hour spent understanding hemodynamics, improving control algorithms, and reducing hemolysis risk.


 2. Dual-Drive Capabilities: Simulating a Total Artificial Heart Today

Our long-term vision is a Total Artificial Heart (TAH) driven by a single motor with two impellers, one for each ventricle (left and right). But in the intermediate R&D stage, the hardware doesn’t always exist yet. That’s where the LUDO helped us bridge the gap:

            •         The challenge: simulate TAH behavior using two separate pumps in parallel.

            •         The LUDO solution: control two motors independently, in parallel, from the same platform.

Vlad explains that this dual-drive capability has been vital for the MAVIS team, enabling us to recreate full TAH hemodynamics on the benchtop using standard motors, while custom single-motor hardware is still in fabrication.

This is a perfect example of how the right controller doesn’t just drive a motor – it accelerates an entire R&D roadmap.

3. Precision, Stability, and Data You Can Actually Use

Video here

Once the system is up and running, the LUDO behaves like the kind of device you’d trust to take the next step toward patients.

From Vlad’s perspective, the key strengths are:

            •         Medical-grade stability in:

            •         Rotation speed (RPM)

            •         Current

            •         Power usage

            •         Real-time graphing of RPM, voltage, and current for instant diagnostics

            •         High-resolution data logging for post-processing and algorithm tuning

“Instead of relying on intuition or rough estimates, we can fine-tune our control algorithms based on hard evidence”, Vlad notes. For a PhD student in heart surgery working on pediatric artificial hearts, this isn’t just a technical convenience – it’s part of building devices that can truly be safe, gentle, and reliable for the smallest and most fragile patients.

4. Software: Powerful… But Not for the Impatient

No serious engineering tool is “click-once and done,” and the LUDO software is no exception. Vlad’s team found that:

            •         The programmability and depth of the LUDO software environment are major strengths.

            •         You can really tailor control parameters and behavior to the specific pump and motor model.

            •         However, the interface is not immediately intuitive and can feel complex and intimidating at first.

Vlad’s conclusion: the learning curve is real, but justified. Once engineers acclimate to the workflow, that complexity reveals itself as necessary depth, not clutter.

In other words, this is not a toy. It’s a professional-grade environment that rewards teams willing to invest time to really learn their tools.


5. Documentation and Onboarding                                                      .

We acquired LUDO differently to most in the MCS community. Because it  was a temporary loan and provided without the usual Hydrix support, the learning curve took a little longer. But once we got up and running, the platform performed as expected.


6. Final Verdict: A Controller That Follows Us From Bench to Operating Room

Perhaps the strongest praise Vlad gives the Hydrix LUDO is not about a graph, a connector, or a mode – it’s about trust. Despite the initial friction around documentation and software familiarity, the LUDO has proven to be a highly effective, reliable, and safe platform.

Its architecture and safety concept make it more than a lab tool:

            •         It’s robust enough to support preclinical (animal) testing.

            •         The same controller can be used as we move from bench simulations to in vivo experiments.

For a team like MAVIS, this is a strategic advantage. It means fewer transitions, fewer unknowns, and a more continuous path from idea to real-world validation.

Closing Thoughts

The Hydrix LUDO has become a core component of our R&D workflow in the MAVIS Artificial Heart lab and in our startup Cardiovascular Engineering. It helped us:

            •         Move faster in early prototyping

            •         Simulate complex TAH architectures before custom hardware existed

            •         Gather high-quality data to refine our control strategies

            •         Prepare a smooth path toward in-vivo testing

And it gave Vlad – and our whole team – a platform to grow as engineers and clinician-scientists.

If you’re working on ventricular assist devices, total artificial hearts, or other advanced cardiac support systems, Vlad’s verdict is clear: the Hydrix LUDO is a demanding, but extremely capable ally. 

If you’d like to connect with Vlad Onceanu, learn more about the MAVIS Artificial Heart project, or explore collaboration with Cardiovascular Engineering, feel free to reach out – this is just the beginning of what we plan to build together.