Seth is a General Surgery Resident at The University of Chicago. Seth is very excited to be spending his two dedicated years in the lab as the inaugural resident in the SurgBioMech Pocivavsek research laboratory. Born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, he attended Washington University in St. Louis for his undergraduate degree and University of Miami Miller School of Medicine for medical school. Seth’s clinical interests include general and vascular surgery. His research focus is on developing a toolset to better identify patients likely to benefit from endovascular aortic repair and utilizing computational modeling to understand the mechanisms behind seal zone failure. In his free time you can find him playing tennis and golf.

Kameel Khabaz is an undergraduate at the University of Chicago from Irvine, California, majoring in Biological Sciences with a Specialization in Quantitative Biology. Having taken a number of STEM classes and reached the Finals of the USA Biology Olympiad in high school, he loves learning about science and mathematics. He is also an eager researcher, currently studying the geometric characterization of type B aortic dissections at the Department of Surgery and having worked on several projects at the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Southern California since his sophomore year of high school. In the future, he plans to connect his research with his passion for clinical medicine and surgery. In his free time, he enjoys spending time with friends and family, as well as playing tennis, running, and biking.

Erin was a Environmental and Urban Studies major and Geographic Information Science minor at UChicago. After graduation she is attending the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai as part of the FlexMedprogram. She is passionate about researching the environmental effects on human health as well as biomechanical failures in surgical anatomies. With the SurgBioMech Lab, Erin studied abdominal aortic aneurysms with endovascular aortic repairs (EVAR) and the forces that lead to the failure of the procedures. More specifically, she investigated the role of endoanchors in maintaining the proximal seal zone, where the stent meets the wall of the aorta, which is clinically known to prevent endoleaks, or failures of the EVAR procedure where blood fills the aneurysmal sac in order to gain a biophysical understanding EVARs. In the long term, the goal of this research is to inform clinical decisions for AAA repairs based on patient specific geometry.

Brian Fleischer is currently a General Surgery Resident at the University of Chicago. He had the privilege of working with the Pocivavsek Lab as a Research Fellow in the Department of Surgery. His scientific interests include geometry, fluid mechanics, and biophysics, and how these all relate to healing. Professionally, he is most interested in Thoracic Surgery and plan to pursue a Cardiothoracic Surgery Fellowship after the conclusion of his residency training. He loves sports (watching and playing), spending time outdoors, and a good science fiction novel.

Janet is an undergraduate student studying computer science with a specialization in data science at the University of Chicago. She is interested in using computational techniques to analyze and extract information from medical images.

Karen Yuan is a third-year undergraduate at the University of Chicago majoring in Biological Sciences with a Specialization in Endocrinology. She plans to pursue a career in medicine and has a strong interest in surgery. She works at the Pocivavsek Lab as a research assistant, examining the geometric features of normal and fragile aortas. Outside of the lab, Karen volunteers at Bridgeport Free Clinic, where she provides interpretive services for the underserved immigrant population in Bridgeport. She also serves on the board of GeneHackers, a student-run lab that designs and executes synthetic biology research projects.

Sanjeev Dhara was a medical student at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and Calvin Fentress Fellow. He was the first trainee by the PI to publish work using geometry to identify fragile aortas (Dhara SS, et al. Gaussian surface curvature mapping indicating high risk type B thoracic aortic dissections. Annals of Vascular Surgery. 2021;70:171-180. PMID 32866573). His IDP has been managing his training and development through enhancement of skills in generating more advanced segmentation models of dissected aortas and running finite element simulations on them and presentation and communication of his results. He has studied the mechanical stability of dissections by incorporating the flap in his computational models important for Aim 2 and has mentored an undergraduate student to take over this project. He was mentored by Dr. Nhung Nguyen for finite element analysis and Dr. Nguyen Nguyen for computational fluid dynamics. He presented his findings at the American Physical Society March Meeting, 29th Annual Huggins Research Symposium sponsored by the University of Chicago Department of Surgery, and the Pritzker School of Medicine Senior Scientific Session. He will be starting an integrated vascular residency program at Emory this summer.

Nguyen earned his PhD in Applied Mathematics from the Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Trento, Italy. Before joining the SurgBioMechLab, he was a postdoctoral associate at Northwestern University and the University of Florida. He conducted research to determine and implement advanced stabilization techniques and time marching schemes for the deliverable PSAAP-II code CMT-Nek (NNSA’s Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program II), as well as integrate the finding of CS and exascale behavioral emulation into this code. His research includes in multi-phase flows, numerical analysis for PDEs, medical imaging, and applied fluid dynamics.