Office Hours with… Martin Pfaller

The heart is like a BMW engine. Enough, at least, that as a younger person Martin Pfaller could seamlessly refocus his line of work from the automotive industry, where he developed motors, to the field of biomechanics, where he figures out solutions to cardiac disease.

Pfaller, who joined the faculty of the School of Engineering & Applied Science this summer, specializes in the computational modeling of the heart and cardiovascular system and develops simulations of the mechanical behavior of heart tissue. His work could lead to better medical devices and a better understanding and predictions of how heart diseases progress.

In the latest edition of “Office Hours,” a Q&A series that introduces new Yale faculty members to the broader community, the assistant professor of biomedical engineering discusses his research, why the heart doesn’t distribute blood the way most people think it does, and his quest to get a pilot’s license.

How would you describe your research?

Martin Pfaller: I’m from Munich and, as a student, I worked for BMW developing electrical motors. We used the classical application of computational methods to figure out how things break; an electrical motor, for instance, will break at some point if you spin it too fast. That’s where I came from. But at some point, I found the field of biomechanics, which basically applies some of these engineering methods that have been around for a very long time but to things like biological tissue.

The heart is my field of research. We use those engineering methods, but instead of predicting how durable or stable human-built things are, we use them to predict cardiovascular diseases. Those methods work because many cardiovascular diseases have some mechanical component. A heart attack happens when blood vessels supplying the heart are blocked, and that alters the fluid dynamics. There’s a very clear mechanical component in that.

Why did you make the transition from BMWs to hearts?

Pfaller: To be honest, I didn’t find it super interesting. I felt like many things have already been figured out. It’s not super rewarding to just work on a new generation of cars that are slightly better, slightly faster, maybe use slightly less fuel. But I think with biomedical engineering, I can actually have an impact. With engineering, if you come up with a good method, you can apply it to a large number of people. I’ve always been interested in medicine. I don’t think I would have been a good doctor, but I like the idea of doing something good for patients.

Have you discovered anything in your research that really surprised you?

Pfaller: There’s a common misconception that the heart squeezes blood through the body. If you go to Wikipedia and look at an animation of the heart, it looks like this ball squeezing the blood out. During my Ph.D., we figured out an aspect missing from many simulations at that time: The heart is supported in space because it doesn’t freely float in the chest cavity, but it also needs to be held in place somehow. I studied the interaction between the heart and the pericardium, which is like a balloon around the heart that holds it in place. It’s a thin film of fluid where the heart more or less can slide frictionlessly because it pumps many times. That needs to be as efficient as possible. What I found out during that research is that the heart actually doesn’t squeeze out the blood. Instead, it shifts it back and forth between its chambers while keeping its total volume constant.

What do you do when you’re not working?

Pfaller: I like to do endurance sports. Usually, I’m road biking or running. I did my first triathlon last year. I’m not a very competitive athlete. I do it more with friends, just to chat and just get out in nature. Also, I took some time off before I started at Yale, and I took flying lessons. I’m working toward a private pilot certificate. My plan is to continue at Tweed New Haven Airport, because it’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was a child.