Cellular Biomechanics and Sports Science Researchers

Director: Dr. Qianhong Wu, professor and director of the Mechanical Engineering graduate programs, and founding director of the Cellular Biomechanics and Sports Science Laboratory

Dr. Wu earned his PhD in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering in 2005 from the City College of the City University of New York and New York Center for Biomedical Engineering, working with CUNY distinguished Professor Dr. Sheldon Weinbaum. He earned his MS in Electrical Engineering from the Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his BS in Power Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

In August 2005, Dr. Wu started his faculty career as an assistant professor at Villanova University. He was promoted to associate professor with tenure in May 2011. Dr. Wu applies fundamental principles of fluid dynamics to bio and bio-inspired applications and has published extensively on these topics, which have been reported in Physical Review Letters, Science, Nature, Scientific American, PhysicsWeb and hundreds of public media around the world.

Graduate Alumni

Sudip Ganguly ’08 MSME—Lift Generation in Porous Media with Application to Snowboarding

Banafsheh Barabadi ’08 MSME—Study on the Dynamic Compaction of Highly Compressible Porous Media

Robert Crawford, PhD, ’08 ME, ’10 MSME—A Systematic Experimental Approach in the Study of Lift Generation in Highly Compressible Porous Media and its Application for Soft Lubrication

Ravi Kuamr Yakkatelli ’09 MSME—A Flow Visualization Study of the Jet Dynamics in a Round Jet Impinging on a Foamed Aluminum Porous Media (co-advisor: Dr. Amy Fleischer)

Srikanth Balagoni ’10 MSME— Independent study: On the measurement of the permeability of soft porous media

Vincent Baro ’09—Normal Force Mechanotransduction with Applications to Hypertension

Thomas Gacka ’10 ME, ’12 MSME—From Red Cells to Soft Porous Lubrication

Amir Vahabikashi ’12 MSME—A Cellular Biomechanics Approach to Investigate the Normal Force
Mechanotransduction of Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells (HUVECs)

Kalyan Ram Vuthunori ’16 MS, Computer Science—Lift Generation in a Functionalized Soft Porous Media

Mahmood Chowdhury—The Closed-Loop Assistant: Semi-Automated Management of Patient Physiology in the Operating Room

Kristen Moran ’17 MSME, Finite Element Modelling of Brain Concussion

Undergraduate Alumni