Ellen Kuhl

I am a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Bioengineering (courtesy), and Cardiothoracic Surgery (courtesy). My area of professional expertise is living matter physics, the creation of theoretical and computational models to predict the acute and chronic response of living structures to environmental changes during development and disease progression. My specific interest is the multiscale modeling of growth and remodeling, the study of how living matter adapts its form and function to changes in mechanical loading, and how this adaptation can be traced back to structural alterations on the cellular or molecular levels. Growth and remodeling might be induced naturally, e.g., through elevated pressure, stress, or strain, or interventionally, e.g., through prostheses, stents, tissue grafts, or stem cell injection. Combining theories of applied mathematics, biophysics, and continuum mechanics, my lab has specialized in predicting the evolution of form and function in living structures using patient-specific custom-designed finite element models. These models can serve as diagnostic and predictive tools to explain human brain development and malformations associated with neurological disorders such as lissencephaly, polymicrogyria, schizophrenia, and autism.