Doug Swank

Professor

Doug Swank holds a PhD in physiology in 1995 from the University of Pennsylvania where he investigated the roles of different muscle fiber types in powering locomotion with his mentor Dr. Larry Rome. From 1996 to 2000 he gained expertise in Drosophila genetics through a postdoctoral position at San Diego State University in Dr. Sandy Bernstein’s lab. From 2000 to 2003 his postdoctoral work at the University of Vermont focused on insect flight muscle mechanics under the supervision of Dr. David Maughan. In 2005 he started his career at the Center for Biotechnology & Interdisciplinary Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. He has been at RPI 17 years, working his way up from Assistant to full Professor of Biological Sciences and joining the Department of Biomedical Engineering. The expertise of his multidisciplinary lab is investigating muscle’s ability to power a wide variety of locomotory tasks and understanding contractile protein mutations that cause muscle and heart diseases. His lab is a world leader in performing Drosophilia muscle mechanics. A current focus of the lab is understanding the roles and mechanisms of muscle stretch activation in insects and mammalian skeletal muscle.