Meet Javier Navarro Rueda, new Assistant Professor in the Visible Heart® Laboratories
In April this year, Dr. Javier Navarro Rueda joined the University of Minnesota as an Assistant Professor for the Visible Heart® Laboratories (VHL). Dr. Navarro Rueda earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from Universidad de los Andes in Colombia and PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Maryland as a Fulbright Fellow. Before joining the University, he worked in teaching and research roles at Universidad de los Andes, the University of Maryland, the University of Rochester, and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, where he served as Director of the Mechanical Engineering Program. His research focuses on cardiovascular biomedical devices, biomaterials, and 3D technologies with emphasis on cardiovascular tissues for surgical planning and education.
Dr. Javier Navarro Rueda
What drew you to the University of Minnesota and the Visible Heart® Laboratories?
Navarro Rueda: Definitely the University’s and VHL's groundbreaking translational research. There's a lot of clinical and engineering history behind this lab and the Medical School here at the University of Minnesota, so it's an honor to be a part of this team. We work daily with new cardiovascular devices in all different stages. It's amazing that companies come through our lab and test new products and ideas in all stages of development, including prototypes, which is rare for most labs.
I first learned about the VHL while doing my PhD on bioreactors. Then a few years later, I was setting up a clinical 3D printing center at Fundación Cardioinfantil, the pediatric cardiovascular hospital back in Colombia, my home country. We contacted many 3D printing centers around the world, including the VHL. I reached out to Paul and they flew us out to Minnesota. We spent a couple of weeks here with the Lab learning a lot and establishing a collaboration with VHL and Stratasys. Thanks to that support, the Center has been running for about 5 years now and is part of the largest cardiovascular pediatric hospital in Colombia, pushing a lot of innovative ideas and being a reference center for Latin America.
What makes you passionate about your research?
Navarro Rueda: The passion here is about being able to change someone's life. As an engineer, we don't usually get to change a patient's life as much as a surgeon or a clinician. But, I've worked in congenital heart research for a few years now, and it's an area where you listen to a lot of stories about families, expectant parents, and babies. You always imagine pediatrics being something positive, but with congenital heart problems, there are many very heavy stories. If we can do anything to help these families and kids, then that's what gets me moving every day. It's a very hard challenge for those families, and we're happy to help them in any way that we can.
A big part of your research focuses on surgical planning and education. Why are these two areas important to you?
Navarro Rueda: Based on my years of experience, surgical planning and education are the two biggest areas where engineers can add the most value to the training stages of clinical processes. Once a clinician is in surgery or in an intervention, they know what to do. But engineers are the ones who are able to design better tools and training methods.
Around the world, I’ve found this to be the same in Colombia and the United States: residents are learning surgeries traditionally through observation standing next to the surgeon. But now with engineered tools like simulating scenarios and 3D printed models with clinical images and databases from clinics, we were able to produce better tools that more closely inform and train students. Training methods aren’t limited to just cadavers or mannequins. We can also rebuild complex case scenarios or repeat case scenarios more than once. Whatever the clinicians want to learn, we can rebuild it and reprint it as many times as needed.
What advice would you give young engineers today?
Navarro Rueda: I always tell my students in class to volunteer in labs, hospitals, and clinics. You need to expose yourself to the real-world questions. Listen and learn from real-world problems. The more you immerse yourself, the more questions start coming up. You start seeing the why’s to everything. The more you develop your own questions, the closer and closer you get to the key questions and passions you’re interested in. Also, volunteering is great and always fun.
What are some fun things you like to do around the Twin Cities?
Navarro Rueda: I studied mechanical engineering, but I'm also very fond of art. My family loves going to museums, or we'll spend the day painting at home. Also anything outdoors. We're lived in big cities before, so we like to go out and enjoy the beautiful Minnesota nature. My daughter is a big fan of Como Zoo; we’ve been there about 5 times.
What are some of your upcoming projects?
Navarro Rueda: We have an exciting project focused on congenital heart disorders. Historically, around the 1950s and 60s, we have lost newborns to this kind of disease. But, surgeries have advanced and we get to see patients with congenital heart disorders beyond the young age of newborns now, from teenagers to adults, which present a whole new set of clinical interventions and complications.
Recently, we’ve published studies showing how 3D technologies can help pre-surgical planning for congenital complications such as complex paracardiac tumor management1 and transcatheter pulmonary valve replacement2. We are continuing to develop cardiovascular biomedical devices and 3D technologies to treat and learn more about CDH anatomies.
3D printed models of congenital hearts.
- Surgical planning aided with 3D technologies for management of complex paracardiac tumors
Camilo E Pérez-Cualtán, Catalina Vargas-Acevedo, Juliana Sánchez-Posada, Camila Castro-Páez, Roberto Gutiérrez-Vargas, Julián F Forero-Melo, Juan Manuel Pérez, Juan Carlos Briceño, Héctor M Medina, Juan Pablo Umaña, Javier Navarro-Rueda, Carlos Eduardo Guerrero-Chalela (PMID: 39342312, PMCID: PMC11438039 DOI: 10.1186/s13019-024-03096-w) - The role of 3D printing and finite element-based computational simulations in transcatheter pulmonary valve replacement
Camilo E Pérez-Cualtán, Camila Castro-Páez, Carlos Eduardo Guerrero-Chalela, Paul A Iaizzo, Javier Navarro-Rueda, Juan Carlos Briceño (PMID: 40812357 DOI: 10.1088/2516-1091/adfbcb)
