Biography

Venkat Keshav Chivukula, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the division of Advanced Cardiopulmonary Therapies and Transplantation at UTHealth Houston focusing on translational research. He is currently working on virtual surgery, AI-powered hemodynamic digital twins, medical imaging, health-related signal processing and medical devices using multiscale and multiphysics computational modeling of biomechanics, blood flow and heat transfer. He is experienced in patient-specific optimization, device-patient interaction, mechanical circulatory support and advanced heart failure. His interdisciplinary work is translational and spans cardiovascular and neurovascular diseases, such as LVAD therapy, heart failure, cerebral aneurysm treatment, stroke, organ transplantation and artificial kidneys.

He has a background in Mechanical and Biomedical engineering, with clinical postdoctoral experience. He obtained his BE in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Mumbai, India, MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Arizona and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Iowa. Following this, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University and the University of Washington.

Dr. Chivukula is a recipient of the Outstanding Teaching Faculty Award (University of North Texas), American Heart Association (AHA) Career Development Award and Faculty Excellence in Research Award (Florida Institute of Technology). His research has been funded by the American Heart Association (AHA), the American Society of Artificial Internal Organs (ASAIO), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the medical device industry.

Beyond research, he is very passionate about teaching and enjoys empowering students in the fantastically intriguing realm of interdisciplinary engineering and science. Additionally, he enjoys K-12 outreach by spreading the power of knowledge (especially in STEM fields) to the youth of today. Outside of research and teaching, Dr. Chivukula enjoys soccer, cars, food and spending time with his family.

Education

Postdoctoral
University of Washington
Postdoctoral
Oregon Health and Science University
Doctorate
University of Iowa
Masters
University of Arizona
Bachelors
University of Mumbai, India

Areas of Interest

Clinical Interests

Virtual patient modeling, health digital twins, virtual surgery, artificial intelligence, computational fluid dynamics, hemodynamic optimization, data driven predictive modeling, patient and therapy risk assessment, patient-specific and patient-derived framework for quantifying and assessing hemodynamic phenomena for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease.