Principal Investigator

Igor Efimov

Igor Efimov, PhD, FNAI, FAIMBE, FAHA, FHRS
Professor of Biomedical Engineering,
Professor of Medicine (division of Cardiology)
Northwestern University, Chicago IL

Editor-in-Chief, Cardiovascular Engineering & Technology

Professor Efimov is the Director of Cardiovascular Engineering Laboratory, an NIH-funded cardiovascular research and engineering laboratory, which focusses on the physiological mechanisms of cardiovascular disease and on development of novel therapies for heart diseases with emphasis on heart rhythm disorders. Dr. Efimov earned his M.Sc. and PhD from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1986 and 1992, respectively, and completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Pittsburgh (1992-1994). He served on the faculty of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (1994-2000) and Case Western Reserve University (2000-2004) in Cleveland, OH, and Washington University in St. Louis, MO (2004-2015), and the George Washington University (2015-2022), where he served as the founding chairman of its new BME Department. In April 2022, Dr. Efimov joined the faculty of Northwestern University, Chicago IL.

Dr. Efimov is Fellow of National Academy of Inventors, the American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineering, the Heart Rhythm Society, the American Heart Association, etc. He has received numerous awards including: 2021 Heart Rhythm Society Distinguished Scientist Award, RASA George Gamow Prize, Astor Visiting Fellowship at University of Oxford, Washington University Chancellor’s Hartwell Prize for Innovative Research, The Doris J.W. Escher Lectureship at Montefiore Medical Center of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Walter Lillehei Lectureship at University of Minnesota, Richard B. and Lynne V. Cheney Lectureship at the George Washington University, etc. 

Dr. Efimov founded Cardialen to develop low energy implantable electrotherapy for cardiac arrhythmias.  Cardialen has raised over $30M in venture and federal funding and is conducting clinical trials worldwide. Dr. Efimov also co-founded NuSera Biosystems to develop new catheter technology for mapping and ablation of arrhythmias.

Dr. Efimov is current Editor-in-Chief of Cardiovascular Engineering & Technology, journal of Biomedical Engineering Society. He served as Associate Editor of the American Journal of Physiology: Heart and Circulatory Physiology and IEEE Transactions in Biomedical Engineering.  He has served on editorial boards of Journal of American College of Cardiology: Clinical Electrophysiology, Circulation Research, Heart Rhythm Journal, Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology, Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology, Scientific Reports, and other journals. He served as a chartered member of NIH Electrical Signaling, Transporters and Arrhythmia (ESTA) Study Section.

He served on numerous international expert panels of the World Bank, Canadian Academies, British Heart Foundation, Russian Ministry of Science and Education, the Royal Society of New Zeeland, Swiss National Science Foundation, National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and other international organizations.

Staff

Paloma amaral

Research Associate Paloma manages most of the administrative and operational needs in support of the lab. She coordinates lab safety and animal protocols to ensure compliance with policies and guidelines. In addition, she participates in many ongoing projects which includes the effects of exercise on cardiac physiology and the development of implantable bioelectronic devices and animal models of cardiovascular disease.

Faculty

Sharon George

Dr. Sharon Ann George is a Research Assistant Professor in the Efimov lab. After obtaining her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Virginia Tech, Dr. George joined the Efimov lab in 2016 as a postdoctoral scientist before moving to Northwestern University as a research faculty. Her research on Cardiooncology identified sex-dependent mechanisms that lead to cardiotoxicity due to cancer therapy. Her work, in mouse and human hearts, led to the discovery that the stress signaling pathways that are activated in the heart in response to cancer chemotherapy, are different between males and females. This could mean that developing therapeutic targets to prevent this cardiotoxicity need to be sex specific. 

Another focus of Dr. George's work is to develop novel, cutting-edge technologies to study cardiac function. With her team of students, Dr. George developed a fully 3D-printed optical mapping system which significantly reduced the overall cost associated with this system. Her most recent publication on triple parametric optical mapping to simultaneously measure electrical excitation, contraction and metabolism in the heart is another example of such technology. 

Dr. George was recently awarded an American Heart Association Career Development Award to support her research on the benefits of exercise in protecting the heart during cancer therapy. Her preliminary work on this topic suggests significant cardiac effects in response to exercise.

Graduate Students

Anna Gams

Anna Gams is a Ph.D. student in the Efimov lab. Anna obtained her bachelor’s degree from the  University of Florida in biomedical engineering and joined Dr. Efimov’s lab in 2017 at the George Washington University. Anna’s research interests are in sex differences and cardiac genomics. During her time in Dr. Efimov’s lab, Anna worked on locating regulatory elements, such as promoters and enhancers, within each chamber of healthy and failing human hearts. Additionally, she identified genes and regulatory elements that have sex-specific behavior. These findings provide a valuable resource for the development of therapeutic targets, with sex and chamber specificity. Finally, Anna also studies the transcriptional changes in pacemaker regions. Healthy hearts have two sinoatrial nodes while failing hearts have only one. Anna identified several key regulator genes that might silence one of the two pacemaking regions during heart failure. Understanding the underlying genomic changes provides regional specificity for therapeutic strategies and interventions.

Anna is a recipient of the Chateaubriand Fellowship that allowed her to spend a semester at Liryc – the Electrophysiology and Heart Modeling Institute at the University of Bordeaux. Additionally, Anna is collaborating with IBM Research to develop cardiac modeling approaches using machine learning.

Zexu Lin

Zexu Lin is a fifth-year biomedical engineering doctoral student (Fall 2022) in Efimov Lab. Zexu mainly focuses on the development and validation of next generation bioelectronics featuring transparency, flexibility, and biodegradability with frequent collaboration with electronic engineers and / or material engineers. Zexu presents ideas and basic requirement of devices intended for cardiac electrophysiology bio-applications across different platforms (i.e., a whole heart organ, cardiac tissue slices) and species (i.e., rodents, human donors); designs animal studies to validate and showcase the feasibility, functionality, efficacy, and biocompatibility of devices for measuring and manipulating cardiac electric signals and rhythm.

Zexu most frequently use ECG and optical mapping technologies to record cardiac signals (i.e., transmembrane potential, intracellular calcium); and use my customized MATLAB tools to analyze data. He also designs 3D drawings to visually present devices along with their application scenarios.

Micah Madrid

Micah Madrid is a third year PhD student in the Efimov lab. He explores human heart research at various structural levels from cellular to whole heart studies. The Efimov lab specializes in optical measurements using potentiometric fluorescent probes. He has observed localized cardiac function, biochemistry, and applied cellular reprogramming. Micah collaborates in validating novel cardiac devices (including implantable actuators, and electrical and optical sensors), characterizing engineered heart and tissue slices (constructed with iPSC-CMs), and developing next-generation biotechnology such as graphene-based opto-electrical stimulation.

Micah began his Ph.D. in 2019 and before starting to learn cardiac engineering, he published in a collaborative study through iGEM in synthetic biology/bioengineering. His background was based primarily in molecular biology/biochemistry but he was always interested in engineering while doing research through this organization. Micah has been able to master a lot of new techniques and work with exciting technology in this lab, diversifying his skills and research interests. Micah has really enjoyed a lot of collaborative projects in cardiac engineering and is always open to discuss ideas in new and old areas of research.

Katy Trampel

Katy Trampel is a first-year biomedical engineering doctoral student. In September 2019, she began working in the Efimov Lab as an undergraduate researcher. She has worked on several projects with Dr. Sharon George. For the cardiac metabolism project, they are working on creating a chamber-specific metabolic profile of the human heart. On the exercise project, she is studying the electrical and structural effects of moderate endurance exercise on mice hearts. For the cardiac oncology project, she is studying the effects of doxorubicin on the heart and the roles of different isoforms of the p38 stress signaling pathway. She is looking forward to continuing her studies at the Efimov Lab at Northwestern University.

Education:

BS–Biomedical Engineering, The George Washington University, (2018-2022)

Lichao James Tang

James is a master student in Dr. Igor Efimov’s lab majoring in Biomedical Engineering. James’s research focuses on understanding the effect of hormonal drugs (estrogen and testosterone) on the heart and developing an implantable chronic drug delivery device. The device aims to maintain normal hormone levels in the long term and achieve intended cardioprotective function.

Education

• BS-Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA(2016-2020)

• MS–Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University (2021–Present)

Satya Bharath Evvala

Satya Bharath is a Master’s student majoring in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Engineering Entrepreneurship. Satya’s primary research in Dr. Efimov’s lab is focused on the field of Cardiac Electrophysiology Mechanism in a Bidomain Conductivity Model (an electric environment to measure cardiac electrophysiology) and developing cardiac patches and stents pitching into bidomain conditions. Another focus of Satya’s work is to develop non-invasive/minimal invasive NanoBioElectric medical devices which helps to detect/monitor Ischemia, impedance, and the contraction of arteries. He received bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from K L University, Vaddeswaram, India (2015-2019).

Binjie Li

Alumni

Ph.D. students (name degree start date, completion date)

1.       Micah Madrid, 2019-present.

2.       Zexu Lin, 2018-present.

3.       Anna Gams, 2017-present.

4.     Rose Yin, 2017-2021. Current position: research scientist, Stryker Corp. Seattle WA.

5.       Jaclyn Brennan, 2015-2020. Current position: postdoctoral fellow, the George Washington University, Washington DC.

6.       John Qiao, Ph.D. 2013-2018. Current position: senior scientist, St. Jude Medical/Abbot, Los Angeles CA.

7.       Christopher Gloschat, Ph.D., 2012-2017. Current position: Senior scientist, St. Jude Medical/Abbot, Los Angeles, CA.

8.       Chaoyi Kang, Ph.D. 2012-2016. Current position: senior scientist, St. Jude Medical/Abbot, Los Angeles CA.

9.    Sarah Gutbrod, Ph.D., 2010-2015. Current position: Senior Scientist, Boston Scientific, Minneapolis, MN.

10.    Matthew Sulkin, Ph.D., 2010-2015, Current position: Boston Scientific, Minneapolis, MN.

11.    Katherine Holzem, M.D., Ph.D., 2009-2015. Current position: vascular surgery fellowship, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO.

12.    Di Lang, Ph.D., 2008-2013, Current position: postdoctoral research scientist, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.

13.    Jacob Laughner, Ph.D., 2009-2013, Current position: Senior scientist, Boston Scientific, Minneapolis, MN.

14.    Christina Ambrosi, Ph.D., 2006 – 2011, Current position: postdoctoral research associate, Stony Brook University, NY.

15.    Wenwen Li, Ph.D., 2007 – 2011. Current position: Senior Scientist, Abbot/St. Jude Medical.

16.    Qing Lou, Ph.D., 2007 – 2011. Current Position: postdoctoral research associate, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.

17.    William Hucker, M.D., Ph.D., 2004 - 2007. Current position: Assistant Professor of Medicine (Cardiology), Harvard Medical School.

18.    Crystal M. Ripplinger, Ph.D., 2004 - 2008. Current position: Associate Professor of Pharmacology, University of California, Davis, CA.

19.    Fujian Qu, D.Sc., 2001 - 2006. Current position: Principle Scientist, St. Jude Medical/Abbot, Sa Jose, CA.

20.    Li Li, Ph.D., 2000 - 2005. Current position: Instructor, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT.

21.    Alexandre T. Sambelashvili, Ph.D., 2000 – 2004. Current position: Director, Medtronic, Minneapolis, MN.

Postdoctoral trainees and advisees

1.       Jaclyn Brennan, PhD, 2020-present, Postdoctoral Fellow, Current.

2.       Sharon George, PhD, 2017-present. Research Associate, Current.

3.       Kedar Aras PhD, 2016-present. Research Associate, Current.

4.       Rokhaya Faye, PhD, 2017-2020, Research Scientist. Current Position: Senior Scientist, University of Bordeaux.   

5.       Timothy Holleran, 2020-2021. Surgery fellow.

6.       Michael Napolitano, 2019-2021. Surgery fellow.

7.       Ethan Rosenfeld, 2019-2020. Surgery fellow.

8.       Sheena Chen, MD. 2018-2020. Surgery fellow.

9.       Jeffrey Panting, MD. 2018-2019. Surgery fellow.

10.    Alexandro Murillo, MD. 2017-2018. Surgery fellow.

11.    Ben Lee, MD. 2017-2019. Surgery fellow.

12.    Matt Skancke, MD. 2016-17. Surgery fellow.

13.    Kendal Endicott, MD. 2015-16. Surgery fellow.

14.    Bastian Boukens, Research Associate. Current Position: Assistant Professor, AMC, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

15.    Fu Siong NH, MD, Research Associate. Current position: Senior Lecturer in Cardiology (Associate Professor), Imperial College London, UK.

16.    HeyJin Hwang, MD, Visiting Professor.

17.    Deborah Janks, PhD, Research Associate. Current Position: Research Associate, Washington University in Saint Louis, MO.

18.    Ajit Janadrhan, MD, PhD, Cardiology Fellow. Current: Clinical cardiac electrophysiologist, Fort Walton Beach Medical Center and Cape Canaveral Hospital, Fort Walton Beach FL

19.    Alexey Glukhov, PhD., Research Associate. Current Position: Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison WI.  

20.    Vadim Fedorov, PhD, Research Assistant Professor. Current Position: Professor of Physiology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.

21.    Vladimir Nikolski, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor. Current Position: Principle Scientist, Medtronic.

22.    Alena Nikolskaya, PhD, Research Associate. Current Position: Senior Scientist, Medtronic.

23.    Noriko Niwa, MD, Research Associate. Current Position: Research Associate, Washington University School of Medicine.

24.    Yuanna Cheng, M.D., Ph.D., Research Associate. Current Position: Scientific Review Administrator, NIH.

25.    Gil Bub, Ph.D., Research Associate. Current Position: Assistant Professor, McGill University, Montreal Canada.

26.    Florence Rothenberg, M.D., Research Associate. Current Position: Professor of Medicine (Cardiology), University of Cincinnati, OH.

27.    Ayman S. Al-Khadra, M.D. Clinical Fellow. Current Position: President, Saudi Heart Rhythm Society. Staff Cardiologist, King Fahd Armed Forces Hospital, Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

28.    Stephane Garrigue, MD, Clinical Fellow. Current Position, Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiologist, Associate Professor University of Bordeaux, France.