Dr. Yichen Ding
- Assistant Professor of Bioengineering
- Fellow, Cecil H. and Ida Green Professor in Systems Biology Science
The legacy of Cecil H. and Ida Green at The University of Texas at Dallas was to establish in Dallas a world-class cohort of faculty and students in the new domain of integrated interdisciplinary biomedical research. The Cecil Green Estate created the professorship.
“This kind of support can significantly advance our current research that involves high risks and high rewards. It can help us better understand the underlying mechanism of heart disease and facilitate new interventional strategies.”
Dr. Yichen Ding develops optical microscopes that provide increased visualization and assessment into hearts by looking at myocardial microstructure and dynamics such as cardiac contraction, blood flow and developmental processes.
His microscopes provide a new perspective on conventional heart systems of animals, such as the visualization of 4D dynamics and the 3D microstructure of the myocardium. The hope is that the work can eventually facilitate new interventional strategies for human cardiac care.
With his optical microscopes, Ding can better track cardiac contractile dysfunction with cellular resolution in zebrafish models, and he expects to study electrical excitation and mechanical contraction coupling processes using this model to understand more about cardiac development, arrhythmias and injury. He believes the work will deepen researchers’ understanding of the underlying mechanisms of heart disease.
Ding’s work has been primarily supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation and the American Heart Association (AHA). He is a member of AHA, the Academy of Cardiovascular Research Excellence, Optica and the Biomedical Engineering Society, among others.
He has received a Stephen I. Katz Early Stage Investigator Research Project Grant, a Pathway to Independence Award from the NIH and a Career Development Award from the AHA.
Ding joined the faculty of the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at The University of Texas at Dallas in 2020. He is also a faculty member of the University’s Center for Imaging and Surgical Innovation, which provides the platform for and promotes collaborations between UT Dallas and UT Southwestern Medical Center with the goal of utilizing imaging, computing and engineering for disease detection, diagnosis and surgery to improve patient care and ultimately human health. He is also a faculty associate in the Hamon Center for Regenerative Science and Medicine at UT Southwestern.
Ding previously was an assistant project scientist at UCLA Health. He earned his PhD in biomedical engineering from Peking University and his bachelor’s degree in optical engineering from Tsinghua University, both in Beijing.