Sarver Heart Center
Room 4137
Speaker: Pieter de Tombe, PhD from Loyola University Chicago
Topic: Cardiac Sarcomere Dynamics in Health and Disease
Dr. Pieter de Tombe received his undergraduate training in Chemistry in the Netherlands. He received his Ph.D. graduate training in Physiology at the University of Calgary, Canada, studying cardiac sarcomere dynamics in Dr. ter Keur’s laboratory, followed by Post-Doctoral training in bioengineering at the Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, studying cardiac pump function and energetics in the Sagawa laboratory. He was appointed to his first independent faculty position at Wake-Forest University, North Carolina, in the division of Cardiology as Assistant Professor in 1991 and in 1996, Associate Professor.
In 1996 Dr. de Tombe joined the department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Illinois at Chicago rising to the rank of Professor in 2002. In 2008, he was appointed the James DePauw Professor of Physiology and Chair of the department of Cell and Molecular Physiology at the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.
Dr. de Tombe’s research program focuses on the cellular mechanisms underlying depressed cardiac function in heart failure, and the regulation of sarcomere dynamics underlying the Frank-Starling mechanism. He has trained numerous graduate students and Post-Doctoral fellows, published >150 journal articles, and has been funded by the Whitaker foundation for bioengineering, the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association, and the National Institutes of Health (the latter continuously since 1992).