Anna Grosberg Joins The Edwards Lifesciences Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Technology
Grosberg to focus on tissue engineering
Assistant Professor Anna Grosberg, Ph.D., Department of Biomedical Engineering, has recently joined The Edwards Lifesciences Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Technology after completing postdoctoral research at Harvard University.
Grosberg joins The Henry Samueli School of Engineering facultyand is expected to provide new and synergistic expertise in applyingmultiscale computational modeling and tissue engineering to stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells), cardiac morphogenesis (development of structure), and cardiac function. Her interests in stem cell biology will create new collaborative opportunities with the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center and her multiscale and integrative modeling interests will provide meaningful interactions with the Center for Complex Biological Systems (CCBS).
“Employing today's most advanced engineering principles in medicine is likely to produce the next set of breakthroughs with wide-ranging impacts on quality of life,” said Grosberg. “A deeper understanding of how a whole heart functions mechanically at different scales would provide us with better tools to treat the different types of heart disease. Likewise, in order to convert the popular stem cell-derived myocytes into viable patient treatments, we must be able to mimic the mechanics of myogenesis.”
“The main strategic thrust of my group's research is to merge modeling and experimental methods to understand the impact of structure and dynamics on the functional characteristics of muscle tissue,” added Grosberg. “Engineering tools that I am bringing with me and ones developed in my lab in collaboration with medical and industry professionals will enable us to apply relevant technologies in the development of pharmaceuticals, assist devices and patient treatments. In my group, we will combine novel experimental assays and computer modeling to study the broad range of spatial and temporal scales, from subcellular to the organ level, necessary to determine how architecture and structure at the various scales affects function, as well as the structure-function relationship itself.”
"We are certainly very excited to have Dr. Grosberg joining the core faculty of the cardiovascular center,” said Professor Steven C. George, Ph.D., Director of The Edwards Lifesciences Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Technology.“ Dr. Grosberg's background and training in theoretical and experimental techniques related to cardiomyocyte biology is current and will synergize with our existing efforts to address structural defects in the cardiovascular center."
Grosberg received dual B.S. degrees in biomedical engineering and in chemical engineering with a minor in chemistry from the University of Minnesota in 2002. She earned her Ph.D. in bioengineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2008.
