Akshita Jha

B.S. Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology (May 2026) 

Akshita graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering and a minor in computer science. As an undergraduate, she worked in the Cardiovascular Fluid Mechanics Laboratory led by Dr. Lakshmi Prasad Dasi and the Gleason Lab led by Dr. Rudolph Gleason. In the Cardiovascular Fluid Mechanics Laboratory, her research focused on understanding how transcatheter aortic valve (TAV) implantation and expansion influence thrombosis risk. She developed bioprosthetic valves and in-vitro flow loops to study thrombus formation under physiologically relevant conditions and used particle image velocimetry and micro-CT imaging to investigate flow patterns and thrombus deposition. She also studied changes in aortic root geometry following TAVR and their relationship to transvalvular flow. In the Gleason Lab, she worked on patient-specific modeling of aortic dissection using CT-derived 3D aortic geometries and finite element analysis. She also worked in the Therapeutic Technology Design and Development Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she developed computational models to study Fontan hemodynamics using clinical MRI data. She joined UEIL in the Fall of 2026 as a biomedical engineering PhD student on the MS/PhD track. Her research will focus on pulse wave imaging for vascular disease detection.