Colton Kostelnik, PhD

Colton received both his bachelor's and PhD from the University of South Carolina in Biomedical Engineering. His current research focuses on the experimental investigation of the tricuspid valve and its response to disease through mechanical, histological, compositional, and microstructural analyses.

Trace LaRue

Sascha Granhold

Diego Guajardo

Tatum Eades

Titus Loftin

Jessie Beck

William Meador, PhD, BME

NIH F-31 Fellow
Will started at UT in 2016 after graduating from Case Western Research University with a bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering. His research focused on characterizing the histomechanical properties of tricuspid heart valve tissue. He graduated with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering in December 2021 and joined Edwards Lifesciences.

Osman Gültekin, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow

Osman received his bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering at METU in Ankara, Turkey. Later, he earned his MSc and PhD degrees at the University of Stuttgart and Graz University of Technology, respectively. His work focuses on the modeling of fracture in human blood clot and the modeling of human-specific tricuspid valve using machine learning applications.

Sotirios Kakaletsis, PhD, ASE/EM
Website: sotiriskak.github.io

Sotirios received a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. His research focused on the mechanical characterization of right ventricular myocardium through inverse finite element analyses. He graduated with a PhD in Engineering Mechanics in 2023 and joined Altair Engineering.

Chen Shen, MSE, ASE/EM

Chen joined us after receiving a bachelor's and a master's degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Aeronautical Engineering. He used image analysis tools to build and then use finite element models of the tricuspid valve. He has returned to RPI to complete his PhD in Mechanical Engineering.

Ethan Maddin, MSE, ASE/EM

Ethan received his bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. His work focused on characterizing right ventricular myocardium under torsion. He graduated with his MS degree in Aerospace Engineering in May 2023, and he is now a researcher in cardiovascular devices at the Texas Heart Institute.

Mrudang Mathur, PhD, ME
Website: mrudangm.github.io

Mrudang received a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Delhi Tech. University, India. He is currently optimizing tricuspid valve surgeries and medical devices using patient-specific finite element analyses of the valve. He graduated with a PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2024 and is now a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford.

Soham Mane, MSE, ASE/EM

Soham joined my lab in 2017 and, unfortunately, is already wrapping up his work with me to graduate with a Master's this year. UT is lucky to retain him and he will stay with the school as a PhD student. He is currently using isogeometric analysis to simulate and analyze networks of semiflexible fibers (including biopolymers).

Gabriella Sugerman, PhD, BME
Website: gabriellasugerman.com

Ella received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), San Luis Obispo in Biomedical Engineering. Her research focuses on the mechanical behavior of blood clots. She graduated with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering in 2023 and is now an assistant professor at San Jose State University.

Blessing Omoregie, Visiting MSc Student

Blessing is a student of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine degree program at the University of Applied Sciences (UAS), Technikum Wien, in Austria. She focused on coupled biological - mechanical characterization of collagen / fibrin co-gels.

Klaas Vander Linden, Visiting PhD Student, KU Leuven
FWO Predoctoral Fellow
Klaas received his bachelor’s and master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from KU Leuven, Belgium. His research focuses on an improved dissection risk assessment of ascending thoracic aortic aneurysms using in vitro experiments and patient-specific finite element analyses.

Jie Yang, Visiting MSc Student,

Jie is a masters student at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. She is majoring in Advanced Computational Methods in Civil Engineering. Her work focuses on the reconstruction of 3D embedded fiber networks from 2D images.