W. David Merryman, PhD, is the Walters Family Chair of Biomedical Engineering and serves as Associate Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University, where he also holds professorships in pharmacology, medicine, and pediatrics. He earned his PhD in bioengineering from the University of Pittsburgh and is a leading authority in cardiovascular, pulmonary, and renal biomechanics and mechanobiology. Merryman’s research centers on understanding how mechanical forces drive fibrosis, particularly in cardiovascular and renal diseases. His laboratory, located within the pediatric cardiology space at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, is composed of biomedical engineering trainees and leverages a multidisciplinary approach that blends mechanical engineering with molecular biology.
