David Vorp

Dr. David Vorp is the John A. Swanson Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering, with secondary appointments in the departments of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering and Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science in the Swanson School; the departments of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Surgery in the School of Medicine; the Clinical & Translational Sciences Institute; and is an affiliated faculty member with the Magee-Women’s Research Institute and the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. He also serves as a Director of the Center for Vascular Remodeling and Regeneration, the Co-Director of the Center for Medical Innovation, as well as the Director of the Vascular Bioengineering Laboratory. As the Swanson School's Senior Associate Dean for Research and Facilities from 2012-2025, Dr. Vorp and his team put together initiatives to improve the quality and quantity of research that comes out of the Swanson School. Among other accomplishments, his team has helped the School’s junior faculty win 15 NSF CAREER Awards in the past 4 years and helped the School reach an all-time high in research expenditures. The research in Dr. Vorp's lab focuses on the biomechanics, "mechanopathobiology," regenerative medicine, and tissue engineering of tubular tissues and organs, predominantly the vasculature. He is currently studying the biomechanical progression of aortic aneurysms by modeling the mechanical forces that act on the degenerating vessel wall. He is developing a treatment strategy for abdominal aortic aneurysms by delivering mesenchymal stem cells or their secreted products to the periadventitial side of the aneurysm to inhibit the matrix degradation commonly seen in the disease progression and promote its regeneration. He is also designing a small diameter tissue engineered vascular graft to treat cardiovascular diseases. Here he also utilizes mesenchymal stem cells or their products incorporated in a biodegradable scaffold that undergoes substantial in vivo remodeling to develop a native-like blood vessel. Dr. Vorp has published more than 130 peer-reviewed research manuscripts and has been awarded over $10 million in research funding from the National Institutes of Health, American Heart Association, Whitaker Foundation, Pittsburgh Foundation, and other sources. He has several patents in the field of vascular bioengineering and was a co-founder of the start-up Neograft Technologies, Inc. Dr. Vorp has served the profession in many ways. He was the Chair of the Bioengineering Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the first non-MD President of the International Society for Applied Cardiovascular Biology, and the Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), for which he served on the Board of Directors for 10 years. Dr. Vorp has been elected Fellow of a number of prestigious organizations, including the American Heart Association, the American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineers, ASME and BMES. His most recent honors include the Van Mow Medal from ASME, the Carnegie Science Award in the category of Life Sciences, and being elected to the World Council of Biomechanics for 12 years (2014-2026).