IMPROVING ARTIFICIAL HEARTS

Electrical and computer engineering major Josh Porter ’06 of Pittstown, N.J., presented research this fall at the Biomedical Engineering Society’s annual conference that will find its way into artificial hearts.

Working as an EXCEL Scholar with Yih-Choung Yu, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, Porter developed a mathematical model to simulate a phenomenon in a beating heart, then integrated it into a model of the entire cardiovascular system. He is continuing the research through an honors thesis.

The work is significant because current artificial hearts are cumbersome for patients, with batteries and control systems that have to be carried outside the body.

“The state of technology we have in a rotary blood pump, or heart-assist device, is that someone has to follow the patient around, turning knobs to adjust the rotational speed of the device,” he says. “They haven’t yet developed a good enough controller to auto-regulate itself, so this model will provide researchers a design tool to build a physiologic controller for a rotary heart-assist device that could operate the pump at a proper speed to avoid suction, a phenomenon that is life-threatening.”

Previously, Porter conducted research to refine the movements of robotic arms that could benefit the safe defusion of landmines and the exploration of Mars.

He was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi (national engineering), and Eta Kappa Nu (electrical engineering) honor societies. He is vice president of Lafayette Christian Fellowship and a member of College Choir and Lafayette Environmental Awareness and Protection.