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Biomedical Engineering Research Seminar

Lucas Timmins, Ph.D.

Texas A&M University

Abstract

Despite advances in medical imaging, treatment guidelines, and interventional and surgical procedures, cardiovascular disease continues to be the leading cause of death worldwide. Motivated by the seminal works in the late 1960s that linked fluid and solid biomechanics to atherosclerosis development, there continues to be great interest in integrating biomechanics into the clinical setting of vascular disease. Efforts are not solely directed at advancing diagnostic and prognostic strategies for coronary artery disease but also leveraging biomechanics to optimize treatment strategies. In this seminar, I will discuss our efforts to establish robust image-based computational frameworks to characterize the fluid and solid mechanical environments towards advancing the clinical management of patients with vascular disease. First, I will highlight our developed computational pipelines that enable reliable patient-specific simulations for integration into longitudinal clinical studies on the natural history of coronary atherosclerosis. Next, I will share our computational approaches for simulating medical device interventions, namely vascular stenting and bypass grafting, including rigorous validation of model predictions and model-directed device design.

Bio

Lucas (Luke) Timmins is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University. Before joining Texas A&M, he was a faculty member at the University of Utah. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 2005 and 2010, respectively. He conducted a fellowship in the Pathology Group at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry and post-doctoral training at Georgia Tech and Emory University. His research group broadly applies engineering mechanics to address prevalent challenges in cardiovascular biology, physiology, and medicine. Major efforts in the lab are directed at developing and translating image-based and patient-specific computational modeling approaches to advance patient management. His research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, American Heart Association, Whitaker International Program, and Burroughs Wellcome Fund.