News Sanjeev G. Shroff
Professor and Gerald McGinnis Chair in Bioengineering
Professor of Medicine
Senior Investigator, Magee-Women’s Research Institute
Core Faculty, McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine
From laboratory research on heart and vascular function to the development of teaching tools and computer programs, Sanjeev Shroff has made significant contributions to the field of bioengineering in general and cardiovascular mechanics in particular.
Research Interests
Shroff’s research interests include contractile and regulatory proteins and whole heart function, role of contraction dyssynchrony and ventricular assist devices in cardiovascular function and remodeling, vascular stiffness and cardiovascular function, and large-scale mathematical simulations of biological systems for research, education, and engineering design.
He directs the Cardiovascular Systems Laboratory in the Department of Bioengineering and collaborates with basic and clinical scientists at the University of Pittsburgh (Magee-Women’s Research Institute, Cardiovascular Institute, Children’s Hospital, McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine), the University of Chicago Medical Center, and the Washington State University. Dr. Shroff’s research efforts have been supported continuously by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 1986, with additional funding derived from other public and private sources (National Science Foundation (NSF), American Heart Association (AHA), pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies). He is also the principal investigator of a NIH-sponsored program aimed at training bioengineering graduate (doctoral) students in the area of cardiovascular bioengineering.
SimBioSys and Virtual Experimentation
Shroff and his colleagues have developed a computer program for teaching physiology. The program, cleverly named SimBioSys—which stands for Simulation of Biological Systems—is comprised of mathematical simulations of interacting biological systems, and is designed to enhance learning by allowing students to perform “virtual” experiments to examine how various systems (e.g., cardiovascular, pulmonary, renal) in the human body function. SimBioSys has been a scientific and educational success in the medical and clinical arena. It is currently being used in many medical school curricula in the United States.
This idea of virtual experimentation via mathematical modeling was further extended by Shroff, resulting in novel material for use in teaching engineering (dynamic systems) and physiological concepts to undergraduate and graduate bioengineering students. The teaching material has attracted national attention: VaNTH, a national, multi-university organization responsible for developing unified bioengineering curricula, is planning to make this highly innovative teaching material available to all bioengineering programs in the United States.
Read more about Sanjeev Shroff’s research and teaching.
