Hadi Tavakoli Nia
Boston University, MA·Biomedical Engineering·Early-career
Every breath stretches millions of tiny air sacs in the lung, called alveoli. At the same time, blood flows through capillaries around them and immune cells patrol the tissue.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Physiology
Engineering
- Topics
lung mechanobiology
mechano-immunity
pulmonary biomechanics
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Probe how stretching of alveoli, the lung's tiny air sacs, is coupled to red blood cell trafficking and oxygen transport in capillaries, using the LungEx ex vivo mouse lung platform with a transparent "crystal" ribcage.
- Determine whether lymphatic vessels around the alveoli serve as the main driver of flow in the lung's visceral lymphatics, using real-time imaging in LungEx.
- Track real-time mechanical interactions between single immune cells and lung capillaries, combining cellular-resolution imaging through the crystal ribcage with mathematical approaches.
More about the research
How do these mechanical motions at the scale of single cells add up to the function of the whole lung, including breathing, blood circulation and immunity? This question has been hard to answer because the beating, breathing lung is difficult to watch at cellular resolution in real time.
Why it matters
This basic science work aims to explain how lung mechanics connects breathing, blood flow, oxygen delivery and immune activity at the level of single cells. This understanding could eventually inform studies of lung dysfunction and the emerging fields of lung mechanobiology and mechano-immunity.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Pablo Sanchez
University of Chicago, IL·Biomedical Engineering
Test whether the liver function of a whole pig, connected to donor lungs by cross-circulation, explains the improved lung recovery seen during ex vivo lung perfusion (EVLP), in which lungs are kept warm and ventilated outside the body.
Hector Gomez
Purdue University, IN·Engineering
Model how vapor bubbles form and evolve in turbulent liquids using high-fidelity simulations based on first-principles thermodynamics, generating data linking fluid motion to cavitation events.
Xiaolei Liu
Temple University, PA·Physiology
Determine the molecular pathways and targets through which lymphatic growth in the heart improves cardiomyocyte survival after myocardial infarction, building on survival signals such as Reelin released by lymphatic endothelial cells.
The school
Boston University: 26 labs on PI Pages, $784M a year on research, 630 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.