ABSTRACT

In the human body, complex flow phenomena in the microcirculation play central roles in maintaining our health and facilitating growth. The microvessels and microvascular networks through which blood flows have diameters on the same order as the red blood cells (RBCs) which comprise blood. As a result, RBC deformation and dynamics, as well as 3D geometric complexity, are major players in driving the fluid dynamics of such flows. Angiogenesis, or the growth of new blood vessels off of existing vessels, is strongly influenced by the wall shear stress exerted by flowing blood, and this process is ubiquitous at all stages of animal life. In spite of this, the 3D characteristics of the wall shear stress which occur in real angiogenic microvasculatures are largely unknown. Towards bridging this gap, I will give an overview of a numerical method that can model, with high fidelity, large-scale 3D RBC-resolved flows through complex microvascular geometries. I will discuss recent work in applying this method, in conjunction with a reduced order model, to uncover wall shear stress characteristics in real angiogenic microvascular networks based on high-resolution images.

BRIEF ACADEMIC/EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:

Peter received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 2004. He worked in industry for 8 years modeling fluid/thermal systems of power plants. In 2018 he received his PhD in mechanical engineering from Rutgers University, working with Prosenjit Bagchi in the area of computational fluid dynamics of biological flows. He did his postdoc at Duke University in the biomedical engineering department with Amanda Randles, after which he joined NJIT in 2021 as an assistant professor in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering.