People Faculty

Harvey S. Borovetz, Ph.D.

Professor and Chair, Department of Bioengineering
Robert L. Hardesty Professor, Department of Surgery
Professor, Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering

Email: Phone: (412) 624-4725 Fax: (412) 383-8788 Office: CNBIO 312

Education

Ph.D. (Bioengineering), Carnegie Mellon University, 1976

Professional Interests

Dr. Borovetz' current research interests are focused on the design and clinical utilization of cardiovascular organ replacements for both adult and pediatric patients. Since 1986, he has headed the University's Clinical Bioengineering Program in Mechanical Circulatory Support and has been featured in several publications. This is a one-of-a-kind program that supports patients who are implanted with a left ventricular assist device or a total artificial heart as a bridge to cardiac transplantation. This work in mechanical circulatory support followed Dr. Borovetz' early efforts in which he helped cardiac surgeons apply extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) to successfully treat a large series of neonates in respiratory distress. Dr. Borovetz has also undertaken part-time sabbaticals at NIH, working in the Bioengineering Research Group of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

Other areas of research in which Dr. Borovetz and his research team are involved in include the investigation of the role of hemodynamics in vascular biology and physiology. For this work, Dr. Borovetz and his students developed a pulsatile perfusion apparatus for the purpose of exposing intact animal and human vessels to realistic physiologic and pathophysiologic hemodynamics (e.g., hypertension) ex-vivo. As such, this work complements the parallel plate flow and cell culture studies which investigate the role of shear stress in endothelial cell biology. A seminal study in this area was the investigation of the putative biologic effects of exposing saphenous vein bypass grafts to arterial hemodynamics and biomechanical forces. The resulting paper, which evolved from nearly 10 years of effort in biomechanics and biochemical measurements of intact blood vessels, was awarded the prestigious Liebig Award for Vascular Surgery Research at the 1990 annual meeting of the International Society for Cardiovascular Surgery.

Dr. Borovetz Is a fellow the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, a past member of the Board of Trustees of the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs, and a past member of the Board of Directors of The Biomedical Engineering Society. He has served on numerous NIH study sections, as an ad hoc reviewer on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Whitaker Foundation, and as an external reviewer for the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rutgers University and the Bioengineering/Biotechnology initiative at the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Borovetz has also served as a panelist for the U.S. Department of Commerce, regarding its National Technology Initiative.

Selected Publications

• Schaub R, Kameneva MV, Borovetz HS and Wagner WR: Assessing acute platelet adhesion on opaque metallic and polymeric biomaterials with fiber optic microscopy. Journal of Biomedical Materials Research 49:460-68, 2000.
• Griffith BP, Kormos RL, Borovetz HS, Litwak K, Antaki JF, Poirier V and Butler KC: The HeartMate® II left ventricular assist system - from concept to first clinical use. Annals of Thoracic Surgery 71:S116-S120, 2001.
• Kameneva MV, Marad PF, Repko BM, Brugger JM, Wang JH, Moran J and Borovetz HS: In vitro evaluation of hemolysis and sublethal blood trauma in a novel subcutaneous vascular access system for hemodialysis. ASAIO Journal 2002; 48:34-37, 2002.
• Wu, J, Antaki, JF, Snyder, TA, Wagner, WR, Borovetz, HS, and Paden, BE (2005). Design optimization of blood shearing instrument by CFD. Artificial Organs, 29, 482-489.
• Wu, J, Antaki, JF, Wagner, WR, Snyder, TA, Paden, BE, and Borovetz, HS (2005). Elimination of adverse leakage flow in a miniature pediatric centrifugal blood pump by computational fluid dynamics - based design optimization. ASAIO Journal, 51(5), 636-643.
• Noh, MD, Antaki JF, Ricci M, Gardiner J, Prem E, Borovetz HS and Paden BE. Magnetic levitation design for the PediaFlow^tm ventricular assist device. Proceedings of 2005 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, 2005, pp. 1077-1082.
• Baldwin JT, Borovetz HS, Duncan BW, Gartner MJ, Jarvik RK, Weiss WJ and Hoke TR: The NHLBI pediatric circulatory support program. Circulation 2006 Jan 3;113(1):147-55.
• Harvey S Borovetz, Stephen Badylak, J. Robert Boston, Carl Johnson, Robert L Kormos, Marina V Kameneva, Marwan Simaan, Trevor A Snyder, Hiro Tsukui, William R Wagner, Joshua Woolley, James F Antaki, Chenguang Diao, Stijn Vandenberghe, Bradley Keller, Victor Morell, Peter Wearden, Steven Webber, Jeff Gardiner, Chung Li, Dave Paden, Bradley Paden, Shaun Snyder, Jingchun Wu, Gill Bearnson, John Hawkins, Gordon Jacobs, John Kirk, Pratap Khanwilkar, James Long, and R. Shaddy. Towards the development of a pediatric ventricular assist device. Cell Transplantation Vol. 15, Supplement 1, 2006, pp. 69-74(6).
• Peter D. Wearden, Victor O. Morell, Bradley B. Keller, Steven A. Webber, Harvey S. Borovetz, Stephen F. Badylak, J. Robert Boston, Robert L. Kormos, Marina V. Kameneva, Marwan Simaan, Trevor A. Snyder, Hiro Tsukui, William R. Wagner, James F. Antaki, Chenguang Diao, Stijn Vandenberghe, Jeff Gardiner, Chung M Li, Daniel Noh, Dave Paden, Bradley Paden, Jingchun Wu, Gill B. Bearnson, Gordon Jacobs, John Kirk, Pratap Khanwilkar, James W Long, Scott Miles, John A Hawkins, Peter C. Kouretas, and RE Shaddy. "The PediaFlow^tm Pediatric Ventricular Assist Device." Seminars in Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. Pediatric Cardiac Surgery Annual 2006. Richard A. Jonas, MD. Editor, pp. 92-98.