Project Description

Arterial stenosis (AS), which can occur in any artery, poses a significant public health challenge, contributing to substantial mortality rates and healthcare costs worldwide. Accurate diagnosis and effective clinical management of AS depend heavily on assessing its ischemia levels and plaque rupture risks. The fluid-structure interaction (FSI) resulting in intraplaque stress and low/oscillatory wall-shear stress patterns play a crucial role in diagnosing the severity of AS. However, the adoption of these factors remains limited in current clinical practice. There is an unmet medical need to enable noninvasive and accurate quantification of FSI quantities for AS in clinical settings. Addressing this need holds the promise of tailoring surgical strategies for AS, optimizing outcomes, and mitigating risk. We propose addressing this medical need as a research direction for a Gilbreth Fellow. The Gilbreth Fellow will advance the state-of-the-art FSI modeling and simulation for real-world applications using advanced computation, fundamental mechanics, and benchtop experiments. Specifically, Prof. Christov has developed the fundamental theory and reduced-order computational tools for flow in deformable conduits, while Prof. Yu has developed image-based and GPU-accelerated computational hemodynamics techniques for translational medical research in human vessels. We seek to advance these directions, leveraging the Gilbreth Fellowship support and associated funded projects to pursue groundbreaking research at the intersection of engineering and medicine. 

Start Date

Flexible, May 2025 or after

Postdoc Qualificatons

The primary technical qualifications for the postdoc will be a deep understanding of stochastic processes, in particular random graph models, stochastic epidemic models and diffusion processes. Experience with a broad set of applied probability methodology is useful, but asymptotic analyses will form a bedrock methodology in this project. Above all, the postdoc must be curious and ready to learn about orbital dynamics and models of the space environment. 

Co-advisors

Harsha Honnappa, School of Industrial Engineering, honnappa@purdue.edu.
Souvik Dhara, School of Industrial Engineering, honnappa@purdue.edu. 

Bibliography

Applied papers:
1. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/JA083iA06p02637 (Kessler, Cour-Palais)
2. https://aquarid.physics.uwo.ca/kessler/Kessler%20Syndrome-AAS%20Paper.pdf (Kessler et al)
Theory papers :
3. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304414997000446?ref=pdf_download&fr=RR-2&rr=8a1b2f5d5f37a8a5 (Berg et al. This is a classical paper where the study of mobile geometric graph started)
4. https://arxiv.org/abs/1008.0075 (Peres et al)
5. https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.04103 (Bhamidi et al.)