Event
BIOE Seminar: Computational biomechanics in vascular treatment planning for cardiopulmonary disease
Friday, April 17, 2026
9:00 a.m.
A. James Clark Hall, Room #2121
Alex Xu
alexmxu@umd.edu
Jason Szafron
Assistant Professor
Carnegie Mellon University
Computational biomechanics in vascular treatment planning for cardiopulmonary disease
Abstract:
Many forms of cardiopulmonary disease require interventions with a vascular component. The biomechanical environment prior to intervention can have implications for the success of a procedure, and the post-intervention hemodynamics can lead to long-term pulmonary remodeling that exacerbates the risk for future complications. In this talk, I will discuss our work using computational fluid dynamics to predict the success of mechanical thrombectomy in acute pulmonary embolism patients and the resulting biomechanical environment with lung transplant in pulmonary arterial hypertension. I will also outline our approach to using multiscale simulations of the pulmonary vasculature to predict changes in clinically relevant metrics of disease progression.
Bio:
Jason Szafron is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Professor Szafron received his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Texas A&M University and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Yale University studying the computational optimization of polymeric scaffolds for tissue engineered vascular grafts. As a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford University, he worked on experimental and computational methods for quantifying mechanobiological changes during the progression of pulmonary arterial hypertension. For this work, he received the Parker B. Francis Fellowship for research in pulmonary and respiratory disease. In his lab at CMU, his team primarily works to develop multiscale biomechanical models of cardiopulmonary disease development.
