Dr. Kassab previously served as the Thomas J. Linnemeier Guidant Foundation Chair and Professor in Biomedical Engineering, Professor in Surgery, Cellular and Integrative Physiology at Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis. He is the recipient of the NIH Young Investigator Award, the AHA Established Investigator Award, Farriborz Maseeh Best Research Award, Abraham M. Max Distinguished Professor Award, Eminent Engineer Award of Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, Indiana’s President Circle Award, and Glenn Irwin, MD Chancellor Best Research Scholar Award. He is also a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Physiological Society Cardiovascular Section and the American Venous Forum. He has served as a regular reviewer on two NIH study sections (Systems Biology; and Hypertension and Microcirculation) and as ad hoc on multiple other study sections; the Editorial Board of American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology, Journal of Biomechanics, and has previously served as an Associate Editor of Mechanics and Chemistry of Biosystems. Dr. Kassab has published over 600 proceedings, abstracts and full-length publications and his current scientific interests encompass the biomechanics of cardiovascular and gastroenterology systems in health and disease. He also has over 300 issued or pending patents in the areas of diagnosis and treatment of heart failure (including electrical, valvular, and coronary artery disease), aneurysm, and obesity. To date, Dr. Kassab’s intellectual properties have resulted in a sale of one technology, six ongoing start-ups and four exclusive licenses to major medical device industry.
Dr. Choy received her MD degree in Lima, Peru, from Universidad Nacional Federico Villarreal, Hipólito Unanue School of Medicine. Her scientific research career in the US started at The University of California Irvine (UCI), where she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. She later moved to Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), where she worked as an Associate Professor of Biomed in the School of Engineering and Technology. As a previous physician, Dr. Choy applies her clinical experience in Internal Medicine to translational cardiovascular research projects. Her interest focuses on the development of new technologies (surgical and interventional) for the treatment of chronic cardiovascular diseases, including heart failure and coronary artery disease. Special interest includes a novel therapeutic approach to re-vascularize the ischemic heart using the coronary venous system, in which she has been working for several years. This project has earned her the Dr. Robert C. Miller Award for Excellence in Vascular Research. In addition, Dr. Choy has many collaborative projects with renowned scientists (national and international) in the field, and she publishes and serves as reviewer in high impact journals.
Dr. Lu received his postdoctoral training in Institute of Experimental Clinical Research at Aarhus University, Denmark and Biomedical Engineering Department at University of California, Irvine. He was appointed as research faculty in the Department of Medicine at University of California, Irvine. Before joining CalMI2, he was a Research Professor in the Biomedical Engineering Department at Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis. He was a member of the American Physiological Society and Biomedical Engineering Society. He served as a reviewer of journals. Dr. Lu has published over 50 peer-reviewed publications. His scientific interests encompass the structural-function relation in response to mechanical and pathophysiological stimuli and mechanotransduction in cardiovascular and gastroenterology systems.
Dr. Mengjun Wang has 20+ years of experiences in in-vivo efficacy/safety studies of cardiovascular devices/pharmaceuticals. He worked at the Henry Ford Heart & Vascular Institute in Michigan for 12 years before moving to San Diego. His work fully focused on understanding the pathophysiology of heart failure, and the development and testing of novel therapeutic modalities for the treatment and prevention of heart failure and other cardiovascular diseases. He has extensive hands-on experience in pre-clinical cardiovascular device studies with large animals and strong expertise in performing cardiovascular interventions/surgery. Currently, he is committed to translational research on novel technologies and methods for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure, myocardial infarction, and arrhythmia. Dr. Wang obtained his MD and MS degrees from Hebei Medical University and Peking University in China and was a highly trained surgeon before moving to the USA. He received research training at Peking University, Creighton University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also earned a MS degree in Medical Informatics from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
As a medical doctor, Dr. Guo became interested in biomedical engineering research and have shifted her career to this area since 2000. She received her postdoctoral training (2000~2006) in cardiovascular biomechanics in University of California at San Diego and Irvine. From 2006 to 2014, she has worked as an Assistant and then Associate Research Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Her research focused on the growth and remodeling of cardiovascular system in response to mechanical and chemical stimuli in health and diseases. In the meantime, she has been working on small and large animal models for the etiology and treatment of heart failure, obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. In 2014, Dr. Guo joined Calmi2 as an Associate Professor, she continued her research on the remodeling of blood vessels in various cardiovascular diseases and expanded her research direction towards more the bioengineering applications in healthcare diagnosis, monitoring and therapeutic technologies and devices. Currently, Dr. Guo and her colleagues are developing large animal models with disorders in cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and lymphatic systems. Using those models, she attempts to develop and validate novel preventive and therapeutic regimens, especially minimally-invasive procedures for the surgical interventions of those diseases.
