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News Anne Robertson

An interview with Anne Robertson, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and director of the graduate program in mechanical engineering

What is your research focus?

Robertson: The main area of my research is the disease of intracranial aneurysms (ICAs). ICAs are abnormal dilations of arteries, and are commonly found at apices of arterial bifurcations and curved segments of arteries at the base of the brain. If untreated, an ICA can continue to grow until it ruptures, resulting in hemorrhaging that is followed by death or severe disability in the majority of patients.

The goal of my research group is to better understand the initiation, growth, and rupture of the ICA and to improve clinical treatments of this disease. The walls of the ICA differ morphologically from those of healthy vascular walls. Elastin, which is normally present in arterial walls, is fragmented or missing in ICA walls. A central question in this disease is why this breakdown occurs and what role it plays in the initiation and continued growth of the aneurysm.

My group approaches this problem from many directions. We believe that early-stage aneurysm formation (including elastin degradation) arises because of an inability of the arterial wall in some people to withstand the hemodynamic wall shear stress associated with regions of aneurysm formation. Using computational fluid dynamics, we have designed an experimental desktop system to reproduce this wall shear stress environment. We will use it in collaboration with colleagues in New York and Japan to test this hypothesis.

From a theoretical perspective, we have developed the first mechanical model that is capable of modeling the breakdown of the elastin during aneurysm formation. We have used this theory to model early-stage aneurysm formation. Recently, we have designed an experimental device that enables us to measure the biaxial properties of cerebral arteries and thereby extend our theoretical model. We are working with the Center for Biological Imaging here at the University of Pittsburgh to relate the changes in mechanical properties we measure to changes in the microstructure (elastin) in cerebral arteries.

Which classes do you teach? Which is your favorite, and why?

I typically teach courses in fluid mechanics, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. I enjoy many aspects of teaching, including the chance to interact with students and the challenge of presenting the subject in a clear and interesting manner, without watering down the material.

While a graduate student in mechanical engineering at the UC-Berkeley, I was fortunate to have outstanding professors for many of my classes. This gave me a great foundation from which I developed my own teaching style. It is extremely important to me that my teaching enhances our students' intuition rather than destroying it. I try to instill in students the feeling that the equations can "talk" to them and they can use the equations to complement and further develop their engineering intuition. It was extremely meaningful to me when I was awarded the Beitle-Veltri Memorial Outstanding Teaching Award by Pitt's School of Engineering last year.

Another means of teaching students is research projects, either through ME1097 courses at the undergraduate level or dissertation work at the graduate level. It is rewarding to provide students the guidance and environment to live up to their potentials. I am continually surprised at how much our undergraduate students can contribute to the cerebral-aneurysm research in my group. Two undergraduate researchers have won prestigious NSF [National Science Foundation] graduate fellowships, and two of them have given international presentations—in Portugal and Italy.

I have also taught short courses such as the mini-symposium, Hemodynamical Flows: Aspects of Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation, in the Oberwolfach Mathematical Institute in Germany in 2004, and I have coauthored a book on this subject that will be published next year.

Why did you become an engineering professor?

I have always enjoyed both mathematics and hands-on mechanical work. I began my undergraduate education at Cornell University studying both biology and engineering, and quickly shifted to engineering. I preferred engineering, where there is little emphasis on memorizing and more emphasis on analyzing and predicting the behavior of the physical world based on a small number of equations.

In graduate school, I had the opportunity to work with an outstanding researcher in continuum mechanics, Professor P.M. Naghdi at UC-Berkeley. He introduced me to the world of rational mechanics, which continues to be my main area of interest. After joining the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, I was awarded a young investigator grant by the Whitaker Foundation that enabled me to begin applying continuum mechanics to the medical problem of cerebral aneurysms.

I cannot imagine any other career than academia. As professors, we enjoy tremendous room for creative work and intellectual development. We can establish collaborations with colleagues all over the world. I have recently developed collaborations with colleagues in Sendai, Japan, and Milan, Italy, and have had the opportunity to travel to these cities to give talks and collaborate on aneurysm research.

What do you do for fun outside of school?

My husband and I have a 5-year-old daughter and are expecting twins (both girls), so much of my outside-work time is family time. I enjoy competitive sports and plan to return to playing soccer after our twins are born, and perhaps karate when my daughters are a little older. I also enjoy traveling and languages. I have been learning Italian for the last five years.

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