March 20
@
12:00 PM
–
1:00 PM
The Mechanics Seminar Series is a weekly seminar given by campus and visiting speakers on topics across the spectrum of mechanics research (solids, fluids, and dynamics). Professor Debanjan Mukherjee is a professor at University of Colorado Boulder.
Presentation Title: The Biofluid Dynamics Of Thrombosis: what doors can custom in silico models open for us?
Abstract: Thrombosis, or the pathological clotting of blood in the human body, is the key underlying cause of severe cardiovascular disease like heart attack and stroke; which together comprise major global causes of death and disability. Fluid dynamics plays an intricate underlying role in pathological clot initiation, formation and growth, and subsequent clot deformation and potential fragmentation (or embolization). There exists a significant body of evidence on this underlying role of flow, and flow-mediated transport from in vivo murine models, and microfluidic assays with whole human blood. Yet, the recapitulation of dynamic clot-flow interactions within real human vascular segments continues to remain a major challenge; and there are currently limited avenues to probe and understand these interactions via standard-of-care imaging. Here, we will showcase custom numerical modeling frameworks that we have developed over the years to address the aforementioned challenge; enabling deep quantitative insights on local clot-flow interactions, clot mechanical response to flow-induced loading, and biochemical transport within and around clots. We will specifically illustrate approaches that resolve key features of real human clots, such as heterogeneous structure and micro-composition, and their interplay with locally non-linear fluid flows. We will also illustrate numerical methods that help model and investigate physiologically critical processes such as clot contraction mechanics, which are otherwise challenging to replicate in an in silico setting. We will close by showcasing our efforts on releasing these computational modeling tools to the broader community as open-source tools.
Bio: Debanjan Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is also a program faculty for the Biomedical Engineering program, and a faculty council member at the BioFrontiers Institute at CU Boulder. He leads an inter-disciplinary flow physics and biofluids research group named FLOWLab. Prof. Mukherjee completed his undergraduate studies at IIT Madras in India, and subsequently his doctoral and post-doctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley. He has received several awards in recognition of his work: including the National Institutes of Health Trailblazer Award for new and early-career investigators; the ORAU Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award; the American Heart Association post-doctoral fellowship award; and has recently been selected as a Research and Innovation Office Faculty Fellow and a Dean’s Excellence Fellow in Generative AI at the University of Colorado Boulder.