Dr. David Vorp is the John A. Swanson Professor of Bioengineering, with secondary appointments in the departments of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering and Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science in the Swanson School; the departments of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Surgery in the School of Medicine; the Clinical & Translational Sciences Institute; and is an affiliated faculty member with the Magee-Women’s Research Institute and the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. In addition, he served as the Senior Associate Dean for Research & Facilities for the Swanson School of Engineering from 2013-2025. He also serves as a Director of the Center for Vascular Remodeling and Regeneration, the Co-Director of the Center for Medical Innovation, as well as the Director of the Vascular Bioengineering Laboratory.

The research in Dr. Vorp’s lab focuses on the biomechanics, “mechanopathobiology,” regenerative medicine, and tissue engineering of tubular tissues and organs, predominantly the vasculature. He is currently studying the biomechanical progression of aortic aneurysms by modeling the mechanical forces that act on the degenerating vessel wall. He is developing a treatment strategy for abdominal aortic aneurysms by delivering adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells or their secreted products to the periadventitial side of the aneurysm to inhibit the matrix degradation commonly seen in the disease progression and promote its regeneration. He is also designing a small diameter tissue engineered vascular graft to treat cardiovascular diseases. Here he utilizes adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells or their secreted products incorporated in biodegradable scaffolds that undergo substantial in vivo remodeling to develop a native-like blood vessel. Most recently, as featured in a recent Magee Magazine article (link) and by the University of Pittsburgh PittWire (link), he and his lab have begun developing minimally invasive methods for diagnosing and staging endometriosis and conducting experiments to understand the pathobiology of this disease.

Dr. Vorp has published more than 130 peer-reviewed research manuscripts and multiple proceedings papers and book chapters. His research has been supported by over $26 million in funding from foundations and federal agencies, including the American Heart Association (AHA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Whitaker Foundation, Pittsburgh Foundation, and other sources. He has several patents in the field of vascular bioengineering and co-founded two start-ups, Aneurisk Inc. (link), a company that builds clinical tools that extract biomechanical and predictive insights from medical imaging and clinical data, and Neograft Technologies, Inc., a company that applies technology developed in Dr. Vorp’s laboratory relating to biodegradable support for arterial vein grafts. Dr. Vorp was recently named among the top 2% of scientists worldwide based on citation metrics.

The figure below shows the number of publications on “AAA biomechanics” since the Vorp Lab’s first publication in this area in 1996.

Dr. Vorp has advanced the profession in many ways. He served as the Chair of the Bioengineering Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the first non-MD President of the International Society for Applied Cardiovascular Biology, and the Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), for which he served on the Board of Directors for 10 years. Dr. Vorp has been elected Fellow of a number of prestigious organizations, including the American Heart Association, the American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineers, ASME and BMES. His honors include the Van Mow Medal from ASME, the Carnegie Science Award in the category of Life Sciences, and being elected to the World Council of Biomechanics for 12 years (2014-2026). 

Dr. Vorp has chaired 15 Master’s degrees and 18 awarded PhD degrees (4 currently in progress). Additionally, he has mentored 22 post-doctoral fellows, two of which are currently in progress. He was awarded the University of Pittsburgh Provost’s Award for Excellence in Doctoral Mentoring in 2025.