Jonathan P. Vande Geest, PhD

Dr. Jonathan Vande Geest is a Professor, Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh.  He received his BS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Iowa in 2000 and his PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2005.  Upon graduation, Dr. Vande Geest began his career at the University of Arizona (U of A) in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and joined the U of A’s Department of Biomedical Engineering in 2009.  Dr. Vande Geest was an Assistant and an Associate Professor at the U of A until 2016 when he returned to the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Vande Geest is a member of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO), the American Heart Association (AHA), and the American Physiological Society (APS).  Dr. Vande Geest’s prior NSF CAREER award focused on the development of a novel smart polymer based patient specific endovascular device for treating abdominal aortic aneurysms. His laboratory has been funded by over $4 million in extramural grants from the National Institutes of Health, NSF, AHA, and various industrial partners. In 2013 Dr. Vande Geest was awarded the Y. C. Fung Young Investigator Award - a society wide medal awarded by the Bioengineering Division of ASME to recognize those demonstrating significant potential to make substantial contributions to the field of Bioengineering. In 2015 he became Chair of the ASME Bioengineering Division Solids Technical Committee and was selected as a member of the Western States Affiliates Research Committee for the American Heart Association. He also currently serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering. Dr. Vande Geest leads the Soft Tissue Biomechanics Laboratory (STBL) whose primary goal is to develop and utilize novel experimental and computational bioengineering approaches to study the structure function relationships of soft tissues in human growth, remodeling, and disease. The STBL has also devoted significant effort in the development of novel endovascular medical devices. Advances in bioengineering are established in the STBL by seamlessly bringing together state-of-the-art techniques in tissue fabrication, nonlinear optical microscopy, finite element modeling, and cell mechanobiology. Current projects in the STBL are focused on neurodegenerative diseases including primary open angle glaucoma and vocal fold paralysis, as well as the development of a compliance matched tissue engineered vascular graft. View a list of Dr. Vande Geest’s publications here.