I am a tenured Professor of Pediatrics, Surgery, and Biomedical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, College of Engineering, Penn State Health Children's Hospital, The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania. 

My life-long passion is the development of novel technologies and methodologies to be used in minimizing the adverse effects of cardiovascular operations, cardiopulmonary bypass procedures, and mechanical circulatory support systems in pediatric patients with a particular interest in congenital heart surgery patients.

Over the past 21 years at Penn State College of Medicine, I have established a multi-disciplinary translational research team with the goal to improve the outcomes for congenital heart surgery patients. I am the Founder & Director of the Penn State Hershey Pediatric Cardiovascular Research Center. This translational research center combines basic science, engineering and clinical applications under the unified mission of pediatric mechanical cardiovascular research. 

I am also the founder and scientific chair of The International Conference on Pediatric Mechanical Circulatory Support Systems and Pediatric Cardiopulmonary Perfusion. The first annual meeting was held at the Hotel Hershey in 2005. Since then, there have been 18 international conferences with more than 4,100 participants from 44 countries in attendance. As a result, more than 536 peer-reviewed articles, editorials and case reports have been generated for this underserved research area. These publications have become the largest resource for the investigators of pediatric mechanical cardiovascular research around the globe.