PI: David Kalfa, MD, PhD
Location
P&S Building – 630 W 168th Street, 17-401
New York, NY 10032
Research
The research in Kalfa’s Lab is focused on biomedical, mechanical and tissue engineering approaches to improve the clinical outcomes and quality of life of children with congenital heart defects. We investigate experimental and computational innovative technologies to offer personalized treatment modalities to children with congenital heart defects, applying the concepts of regenerative medicine and precision medicine to the field of congenital cardiac surgery. Our laboratory has a highly multidisciplinary profile. The Kalfa's lab has expertise in polymer science, computational modeling, experimental mechanics, tissue engineering, valve biology and design optimization techniques. Our projects included the development of growth-accommodating pediatric medical devices to address valve-related and heart failure-related unmet clinical needs, new biomaterials for pediatric and adult cardiac surgery, new strategies to improve the durability of homografts and allografts and patient-specific computational model-based predictive tools. Our laboratory is a home to the Translational Research activity of the Columbia Pediatric Heart Valve Center founded to improve the quality of care for children and adults with congenital heart valve malformations. We are actively collaborating with numerous investigators at Columbia University, nationwide and throughout the world. The Kalfa lab if funded by the NIH, AHA, TSF and many other funding sources.
Lab Members
- Mingze Sun, PhD – Associate Research Scientist
- Kewei Li, PhD – Postdoctoral Research Scientist
- Senay Ustunel PhD – Postdoctoral Research Scientist
- Reed LaSala, MD – Postdoctoral Research Fellow
- Halil Beqaj – Student