Principal Investigator
David L. Bark Jr., PhD
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Hematology and Oncology
- Phone: 314-454-6018
- Email: bark@nospam.wustl.edu
David Bark comes from Colorado State University, where he was an assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering. He is a recent recipient of the prestigious American Heart Association (AHA) Career Development Award from the American Heart Association. He completed his Ph.D. in bioengineering and MS in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and completed his BS in mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. His postgraduate professional experience includes Research Fellow positions at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia; Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Colorado State University; and Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Pediatrics, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO. His postdoctoral research was supported by a National Institutes of Health (National Heart Lung and Blood Institute) F32 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Personnel
Serdar Gorumlu, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Alice Liu
Graduate Research Assistant
Alice Liu received a BS from the University of Washington and joined the Bark lab as a PhD student in August 2020. She was born and raised in Colorado and did her undergraduate degree in Seattle. Her passion for research can be traced back to her work in von Willebrand’s Factor, studying its transcriptional and epigenetic modifiers. Her current research interest lies in the development of the heart, utilizing her experience with culturing endothelial cells. Outside of school, she loves anything and everything outdoors. In her free time, she enjoys playing soccer and racing triathlons.
Alice is also passionate about making Weibel-Palade bodies.
Alex Gendernalik
Graduate Research Assistant
Alex received a BS Biological Sciences from Colorado State University and joined the Bark lab as a PhD student in January 2017. Alex’s current work focuses on how the mechanical properties of the embryonic heart tissue responds to and influences cardiac development.
Kimsey Platten
Graduate Research Assistant
Past personnel
Iain Briongos
BS Biological Sciences, Edinburgh University and Colorado State University
Project: Researching platelet responses to mechanical environment and the role in thrombosis.
Iain joined the lab as a MS student in August 2017.
Alireza Sharifi
Alireza received bachelor of science in BSc (Thermal fluid dynamics) and a MSc in Mechanical Engineering (Energy conversion) at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. Alireza joined the lab in August 2017 and is developing a new blood pump and evaluates thrombotic and coagulant responses in response to medical devices.
Banafsheh Zebhi
Banafsheh Zebhi joined Dr. Bark lab in 2017 in pursuit of a PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering. She is working on simulation of fetal heart development and congenital heart diseases. She received her M.S. in Mechanical engineering at CSU. The focus of her M.S. research was to investigate the effect of aortic valve calcification on post-procedural paravalvular leak.