Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the world. This talk will present two examples of cardiovascular biomechanical studies in my lab. Diastolic heart failure, heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), is the most common cause of hospital admission in patients over 65 years old and has high mortality. Current therapies control symptoms but cannot acutely and permanently increase heart compliance. Using human heart explants and rabbit heart models, our studies demonstrated that cutting trabeculae carneae, redundant muscle bundles in the heart, significantly improves diastolic compliance without reducing systolic function, indicating that cutting left ventricular trabeculae carneae could be a potential approach to treat patients with diastolic heart failure. In addition, interesting results of artery instability as a possible mechanism for the development of tortuous/twisted blood vessels such as varicose veins will be presented.
 
Dr. Han is the Zachry Endowed Chair Professor and Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). He received his PhD degree in solid mechanics/biomechanics from Xi’an Jiaotong University in China with joint training from the University of California at San Diego under the tutelage of Professor YC Fung. Han was an associate professor at Xi’an Jiaotong University and a research engineer II at Georgia Institute of Technology before joining UTSA in 2003. Han’s research interests are in the area of cardiovascular biomechanics with focus on arterial wall stress and instability, cardiac mechanics, and tissue remodeling. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal papers. He received a CAREER award from NSF in 2007. He is a Fellow of American Heart Association (AHA), College of Fellows of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).