David Blauvelt Email & Phone Number

I am interested in combining engineering and clinical medicine to improve the care of critically-ill children in the pediatric intensive care unit. My prior research training provided me with skills in bioengineering as well as basic laboratory research and animal models. As a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Medical Research Fellow, I engineered a novel technique for quantifying blood flow velocity in the microvascular network of human skin tumors xenografted into mice. Prior to that work, I studied the olfactory bulb in mice. I helped design and build a customized setup that allowed me to deliver a varietyof odors to an awake, behaving mouse while simultaneously imaging its olfactory bulb.My current research focuses on developing an artificial placenta device, a form of extracorporeal life support (ECLS) for extremely preterm (EPT) infants. Current devices in development use hollow fibermembrane technology, which requires systemic anticoagulation to prevent device clotting. However, anticoagulation can cause intracranial hemorrhage, which is especially problematic in EPT infants. To tackle this problem, I helped develop a novel semipermeable membrane composed of pore-containing silicon and gas-permeable silicone. Ongoing work is focused on building a clinical scale oxygenator using these membranes and testing these devices in large animal models.

Listed skills include Biochemistry, Data Analysis, and Molecular Biology.