William J. Federspiel, Ph.D., is professor of chemical engineering, surgery and bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh School of Engineering, as well as an associate professor of surgery in the School of Medicine. He is director of research in the Medical Devices Laboratory: Biotransport, Pulmonary, and Cardiovascular at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
Dr. Federspiel received his doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Rochester, N.Y. in 1983. A past principal staff scientist at Danvers, Mass.-based ABIOMED Inc., maker of the Abiocor self-contained artificial heart, Dr. Federspiel has been on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh since 1995.
Prior to coming to Pittsburgh, he was a biomedical engineering research associate at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Dr. Federspiel also was an assistant professor in the biomedical engineering department at Boston University and a senior scientist for the Biomechanics Institute in Boston.
His expertise is in the flow of fluids and the movement of mass in biomedical devices and in physiological systems. Specific applications of interest include the design and development of novel artificial lungs, the use of polymer membranes in biomedical transfer processes and the analysis of fluid and mass movement in the respiratory and cardiovascular systems.
While at the University of Pittsburgh, he has researched engineering considerations related to the development and operation of artificial lungs, resulting in his authorship of more than 50 published books and articles on the subject of replacement lungs, gas exchange, blood flow and the Hattler respiratory support catheter.
He is a member of many professional societies, including the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Biomedical Engineering Society and the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs. In 1999, he was elected as a fellow into the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers.
Dr. Federspiel also has served as a reviewer for National Institutes of Health study sections including Surgery and Bioengineering, Experimental Cardiovascular Sciences and Lung Biology and Pathology.
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