Luka Pocivavsek

Dr. Luka Pocivavsek is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Chicago. He is a vascular surgeon who specializes in peripheral vascular, cerebrovascular, and aortic disease. He received his MD and PhD from The University of Chicago, as well as a BS in physics and BA in history from Duke University. He completed his surgical residency at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center where he received their Center for Medical Innovation Research Grants and Innovation Institute First Gear Fellowships. He was also the recipient of the American College of Surgeons Resident Research Scholarship. Afterwards, he did his fellowship in vascular surgery at The University of Chicago and was honored at the Department of Surgery’s annual Charles B. Huggins Research Symposium in 2019. He is also the co-founder of Aruga Technologies, a medical device company that integrates new surface technology inspired by nature into the design of synthetic vascular grafts.

Research Interests: The Pocivavsek Lab (SurgBioMech) is an inter-disciplinary lab that combines the physical sciences, engineering, and medicine. We apply principles from differential geometry and mechanics to understand aortic pathology, stability and failure of endovascular repairs, stress focusing phenomena induced by surgical interventions, and interfacial adhesion, surface renewal, and topography. We utilize advanced computational methods to extract and define geometric feature spaces that can be linked to mechanical instabilities from patient derived data; finite element methods to model a variety of complex systems, geometries, and materials under different conditions; computational fluid dynamics to study stability of seal zones with flow; micro-computed tomography to detect the underlying fiber-reinforced structures of tissues; x-ray scattering techniques to probe the structure and interactions of cell monolayers on solid substrates; and Langmuir monolayers to study the wrinkling, folding, and collapse behaviors of films at air/water interfaces.