Professor Nikos Stergiopulos, Laboratory of Hemodynamics and Cardiovascular Technology, Institute of Bioengineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland, presents this Seminar as part of the Department of Bioengineering Departmental Seminars on; “From Basic Constituents to Structure and Function: new modelling approaches for the biomechanics of the arterial wall.”

Stresses within the arterial wall are implicated in a number of important physiopathological processes. Challenges in analyzing local wall stresses derive from the fact that the wall is an active, non-homogeneous, multi-layered structure. During disease, ageing or remodeling, in general, the active part of the wall (VSM) is functionally altered and the synthesis of new material may change the elastic and structural characteristics of the wall. We will discuss the development of constituent-based strain energy functions (SEF) and their use in analyzing the elastic and structural properties of the wall. Reference will be made to our recent work, where different wall components have been selectively altered to provide additional data on their contribution to the global structural properties of the wall. The use of constituent-based SEF for the theoretical study of wall remodeling in response to hypertension or changes in perfusion flow will be briefly discussed at the end.

Nikos Stergiopulos received BS in Mechanical Engineering from the National Technilcal University of Athens, Greece in 1985 and MS and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Iowa State University, USA in 1987 and 1990, respectively. In 1991 moves to the EPFL as a Scientific Collaborator, to be later promoted to Assistant Professor in 1996 and Associate Professor in 2003. He is director of the Laboratory of Hemodynamics and Cardiovascular Technology. His main research interests are arterial wall mechanics, arterial wall remodeling, hemodynamics, heart-arterial system interaction and vascular implants. He currently directs the Graduate Program of Bioengineering. Nikos Stergiopulos has been actively promoting technology transfer and entrepreneurship in Medical Device Technology. In 1998 he co-founded EndoArt, a medical device company, world leader in telemetrically controlled implants for the treatment of congenital heart disease and morbid obesity.

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