Welcome to the Peirce-Cottler Laboratory
in the Department of Biomedical Engineering
at the University of Virginia

Every tissue in the body needs a blood supply, and that demand is met by a network of interconnected blood vessels called the microcirculation. The microcirculation is a highly adaptable system of small blood vessels that are a tenth of the diameter of a human hair–-you need a microscope to see them–-and there are over a million microvessels in a single gram of tissue. Microvascular growth and remodeling are important processes in nearly every major disease, including diabetes, heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, stroke, neurodegenerative diseases, and cancer. In our lab, we develop and use experimental and computational techniques to study and design new approaches for growing and regenerating injured and diseased tissues by manipulating the structure and composition of the microvasculature.

News from the Lab

Joe Walpole (M.D./Ph.D. Candidate) and Angela Jividen (B.S. in BME expected 2015) won a "Collaborative Graduate Student Research Grant", which is part of President Teresa Sullivan's "Big Data Initiative" and sponsored by the Jefferson Trust and the Vice President for Research at UVA. Their project involves a new collaboration with Jeana Ripple and her students in the UVA School of Architecture. Big Data Revolution

Ethan Nyberg, Nick Palacio, and Jamie Bagwell won first place in their division in the 2013 UVA Presidential Poster Competition! 2013 Presidential Poster Competition

Jessica Ungerleider, Tyler Brobst, and Alyssa Long (B.S. in BME, expected 2013) won 2nd place in the UVA Undergraduate Research Network Competition and third place in the School of Engineering Research and Design Competition! Read more about this team, who also won a Harrison Undergraduate Research Award: Press Release in UVA Today 4.16.13, Undergraduate Research Team wins Harrison Award