Leadership
Director
Jen Davis, PhD, Associate Professor Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Bioengineering
Dr. Davis, a cellular and molecular physiologist, uses genetic engineering to study the biology of cardiac wound healing and remodeling. Specifically, she investigates the role of scar tissue in repair processes and how it affects heart muscle function and prevents regeneration. Dr. Davis identified a key set of molecular signals that activate scar-forming myofibroblast cells, and she has successfully engineered them to either promote or block scarring, both at the cellular level and in genetically modified mice.
Dr. Davis earned her Ph.D. in Molecular & Integrative Physiology at the University of Michigan, followed by postdoctoral training at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Heart Institute. In 2014, she won the Louis N. & Arnold M. Katz Basic Science Research Prize for Young Investigators from the American Heart Association.
Co-Director
Farid Moussavi Harami, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Cardiology
Farid Moussavi-Harami, M.D. is an Associate Professor of Cardiology and Adjunct Professor of Bioengineering and Laboratory Medicine & Pathology at the University of Washington. His research focuses on the molecular basis of inherited cardiomyopathies. His laboratory combines biophysical, cellular, physiological, and computational methods to define how genetic variants alter sarcomere function and contribute to disease. Experimental studies span isolated myosin motors, myofibrils, multicellular preparations, cells, and whole-heart models, and are integrated with computational modeling and machine learning approaches.
Dr. Moussavi-Harami received his B.S. in Chemistry, with Honors and Highest Distinction, and his M.D. from the University of Iowa. He completed residency training in Internal Medicine at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics and fellowship training in Cardiology at the University of Washington. Following his clinical training, he joined the faculty in the Division of Cardiology in 2013. His research training was supported by an American Heart Association (AHA) Postdoctoral Fellowship and an NIH Mentored Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award (K08) under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Regnier in the Department of Bioengineering. As an independent investigator, his work has been funded by an AHA Collaborative Sciences Award and NIH R01 grants. In 2024, he received the Paul F. Cranefield Award from the Society of General Physiologists for an outstanding article published in the Journal of General Physiology. Dr. Moussavi-Harami is Co-Director of the Cardiovascular Research Training Program, an NHLBI-funded T32 training program at the University of Washington.