Mitchel J Colebank, Ph. D.
Postdoctoral researcher
University of California, Irvine
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Edwards Lifesciences Foundation Cardiovascular Innovation and Research Center
Welcome to my website
My name is Mitchel Colebank, and I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Chesler Lab at the University of California, Irvine as part of the UCI Edwards Lifesciences Foundation Cardiovascular Innovation and Research Center (CIRC). I received a Ph.D. in Biomathematics from North Carolina State University in the spring of 2021 under the supervision of Mette Olufsen. My broad research interests are in computational science, mathematical modeling of cardiovascular phenomena, and understanding the mechanobiological mechanisms of pulmonary vascular disease.
February 2024: I am excited to announce that I have accepted a faculty offer at the University of South Carolina (USC) in the Department of Mathematics! I will start my faculty position in August, 2024. I'm looking forward to this next chapter in my research career, and to starting my own group of computational scientists!
October 2023: My new preprint is now available on arXiv! In this study, we quantify uncertainty in a two-sided model of the pulmonary arterial and venous tree using polynomial chaos expansions. Specifically, we show how uncertainties in the structured tree model and proximal and distal stiffness affect pressure-flow relationships. We also provide uncertainty bounds for mechanotransduction stimuli, like wall shear stress and cyclic stretch, and quantify uncertainty around the predictions provided from the structured tree model and the distal vasculature.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.04057
April 27th, 2023: We had an incredible turnout at the 2023 Cardiac Physiome Workshop! Hosted together with Edwards Lifesciences, our organizing committee at the CIRC put together a 3.5 day conference focused on cardiovascular function, modeling, and innovation. We were pleased to host four plenary speakers, over 130 participants, and scientists from over 12 countries. Thank you to everyone who participated, and funding from UCI and the National Science Foundation. Looking forward to the next meeting in Freiburg, Germany!
Website: https://www.cardiacphysiome.org/
April 22, 2023: I was thankful to be an attendee and presenter at the Lorentz Center workshop on "Uncertainty Quantification for Healthcare and Biological Systems" in Leiden, the Netherlands! I presented preliminary work on using polynomial chaos expansions as a surrogate model for pulmonary arteriovenous dynamics. We had an outstanding slate of presenters and workshop time to address concepts related to UQ, simulation in healthcare, and the future of digital twins.
March 1, 2023: Very excited that the final project from my Ph.D. (co-first authored with the now Dr. Amanda Colunga at NC State University) was published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface! Our work combined hemodynamic data from nine pulmonary hypertension (PH) patients with a closed-loop, lumped parameter model of all four heart chambers and the systemic and pulmonary circulations. Happy that this paper is finally published!
November 5, 2022: Happy to see that Alyssa Taylor-LaPole (Ph.D. candidate, NC State) had her first manuscript published! Our work used a one-dimensional hemodynamics model to simulate systemic arterial function in two pediatric patients: one with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and another with double outlet right ventricle anatomy. Great job, Alyssa!
January 17, 2023: Happy to be a co-author on Dr. Ryan Pewowaruk's paper on smooth muscle tone and its (potential) therapeutic target for decreasing arterial stiffness. A relatively simple model of vasoactive tone within a physiology pressure-area relationship shows that smooth muscle stiffness is less than that of the collagen, suggesting it may decrease effective arterial stiffness. Great work, Ryan!
September 20, 2022: My first manuscript from my postdoc has been published! The study investigates different in-vivo experimental designs using a multiscale computational model of murine cardiovascular dynamics. Results show that data from both the RV and LV are required to reduce uncertainty and infer model parameters uniquely. Happy to publish this work with Dr. Chesler!
June 20 2022: Very pleased that our review "Aerosol Transport Modeling: The Key Link Between Lung Infections of Individuals and Populations," was published in Frontiers in Physiology! This was a great joint effort by our pulmonary/lung subgroup of the NIH Interagency Modeling and Analysis Group (IMAG) Multiscale Modeling group on Viral Pandemics group. Great work to all the authors, especially Dr. Chantal Darquenne at UCSD for keeping us organizing and getting this to submission!
Paper: https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2022.923945
IMAG Page: https://www.imagwiki.nibib.nih.gov/working-groups/multiscale-modeling-and-viral-pandemics
FALL 2021 NEWS
I am happy to announce that I have been awarded an NIH TL-1 fellowship through UCI's Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTS). My project will utilize in-silico, in-vitro, and in-vivo experiments to deduce the mechanobiology of pulmonary vascular remodeling. Funding for this project will begin March 2022.
Questions?
Contact [mcoleban (at) uci (dot) edu] to get more information on my research and outreach interests