fbpx Abhijit Patwardhan Named Interim Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering | University of Kentucky College of Engineering

Abhijit Patwardhan Named Interim Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering

January 31, 2022

Patwardhan joined the University of Kentucky in 1992 as a Research Assistant Professor in the Center for Biomedical Engineering.

Abhijit Patwardhan has been selected as the new interim chair of the F. Joseph Halcomb III, M.D. Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Patwardhan joined the University of Kentucky faculty in 1992 as a Research Assistant Professor in the Center for Biomedical Engineering. A prolific scholar and researcher, Patwardhan has published extensively and secured research funding from federal and private agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the American Heart Association.

In 2019 Patwardhan and a team of UK College of Medicine researchers were awarded a $1.1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to research Toxoplasma gondii, an insidious parasite that infects one out of three people on the planet. This work led to a deeper understanding of the parasite’s physiology, which was key to understanding the basis for drug resistance, identification of novel drug targets and exposing the mechanisms governing reactivation of the parasite.

Patwardhan also leads the Cardiac Rhythm lab, which focuses on determining mechanisms of arrhythmic activity in the ventricles of the heart, neural control of cardiovascular regulation and development of image processing and machine learning tools for high throughput analysis of histologic images. Recent and ongoing studies include the following:

  • Investigation of cardiovascular-brain interactions while listening to music.
  • Improving specificity in the use of T wave alternans in ECGs to predict risk of adverse cardiac electrical events.
  • Development of image processing tools and mathematical models for furthering our understanding of biology of T Gondii, a common infectious parasite.

Patwardhan succeeds Guigen Zhang, who served as chair since 2017.