Dr. Andrew McCulloch is a distinguished leader in biomedical engineering whose pioneering work has transformed the understanding of cardiac mechanics and multiscale physiological systems. He currently holds the prestigious Shu Chien Chancellor's Endowed Chair in Engineering and Medicine at the University of California San Diego, where he serves as Director of the Institute of Engineering in Medicine and leads the Wu-Tsai Human Performance Alliance. Following completion of his PhD in engineering science and physiology from the University of Auckland, New Zealand in 1986, he joined the UC San Diego faculty in 1987 where he has remained for his entire academic career. He previously served as Vice Chair and then as Chair of the Bioengineering Department from 2005 to 2008, significantly shaping the department's development and strategic direction during his tenure.
Dr. McCulloch has authored over 300 peer-reviewed research articles with substantial impact, as evidenced by his Google Scholar citation count exceeding 29,000. His laboratory employs innovative multi-scale engineering approaches to investigate the relationships between cellular and molecular structures of cardiac and skeletal muscle and their electrical and mechanical functions during ventricular remodeling, heart failure, and arrhythmias. His team has successfully translated computational models into clinical applications, with licensed technologies that have received FDA approval for patient use, demonstrating significant translational impact. His research has established fundamental principles connecting molecular mechanisms to organ-level function in both cardiac disease and athletic performance.
Beyond his research achievements, Dr. McCulloch serves on the Executive Council of the International Union of Physiological Sciences and as Associate Editor of PLoS Computational Biology, influencing the direction of computational physiology worldwide. He directs the UCSD Interfaces Graduate Training Program and the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Specialization in Multi-Scale Biology, cultivating the next generation of interdisciplinary researchers at the intersection of engineering and medicine. As a Senior Fellow of the San Diego Supercomputer Center and member of Qualcomm Institute, he continues to bridge computational approaches with physiological research, expanding his work into integrating machine learning with patient-specific cardiac models. His ongoing research explores mechanotransduction mechanisms in cardiac myocytes and develops new computational approaches to diagnose and treat heart disease, maintaining his position at the forefront of cardiovascular computational physiology.
