Meet Our Team
The Wagenseil lab studies cardiovascular mechanics, focusing on cardiovascular development, extracellular matrix proteins, and microstructurally-based constitutive modeling. This research is critical for improving clinical interventions for elastin-related diseases and designing advanced protocols for the construction of tissue-engineered blood vessels.
Principal Investigator: Jessica Wagenseil
Pronouns: She/her/hersDepartment Chair and Professor , Department of Biomedical Engineering, The University of Utah
— Postdoc., Washington University, Cell Biology and Physiology
— D.Sc., Washington University, Biomedical Engineering
— B.S., University of California, San Diego, Bioengineering
Prof. Jessica Wagenseil runs the Vascular Mechanics Laboratory. She received her B.S. in Bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego and her D.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering from Washington University. Her research focuses on vascular biomechanics and mechanobiology and has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), American Heart Association (AHA), and the Marfan Foundation. She is a fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).
Tania Aguillera-Pineda, B.S.
TECHNICIAN
Tania joined the laboratory at the University of Utah in 2026. She is using mouse models of supravalvular aortic stenosis (SVAS) to understand how smooth muscle cells in the aortic wall respond to the altered mechanical environment in the absence of elastin.
tania.a@utah.edu
Luis Castro, M.S.
Ph.D. student
Luis joined the laboratory at Washington University in 2024. He is building multiscale computational models of thoracic aortic aneurysm growth and remodeling.
c.luis@wustl.edu
Krashn Kumar Dwivedi, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral fellow
Krashn joined the laboratory at Washington University in 2023 and moved with the laboratory to the University of Utah in 2026. He is using complementary animal and computational models to identify biomechanical biomakers in thoracic aortic aneurysm. He is also studying sex differences in aneurysm progression.
krashn.d@utah.edu
Abhi Gajera, B.S.
Postdoctoral fellow
Abhi joined the laboratory at the University of Utah in 2026. He is using advanced imaging, such as Raman microscopy, to identify chemical changes in the extracellular matrix of the aortic wall that occur with aneurysm progression.
u6079703@umail.utah.edu
Pooya Elahitaleghani
PostDOCTORAL fellow
Pooya joined the laboratory at the University of Utah in 2026. He is using advanced biomaterials to study the mechanobiology of smooth muscle cells and their response to changes in their mechanical environment associated with aortic diseases.
pooya.elahi@utah.edu
Tanushka Samara
Ph.D. student
Tanushka joined the laboratory at the University of Utah in 2026. Her research focuses on determining how pentagalloyl glucose (PGG) can protect elastic fibers from degradation associated with thoracic aortic aneurysms.
tanushka.samara@utah.edu
Viola Wu
Ph.D. student
Viola joined the laboratory at Washington University in 2023. Her project is dedicated to identifying mechanical biomarkers of aneurysm progression and failure in mouse models using computational methods and machine learning.
yufanwu@wustl.edu
Join the Wagenseil Vascular Mechanics Laboratory
The laboratory welcomes trainees interested in studying vascular biomechanics and mechanobiology in development and disease, focusing on how the mechanical behavior of large, elastic arteries contributes to normal cardiovascular function and abnormal function in disease.