I'm working on a project to investigate mechanical mechanisms of angiogenesis — the growth of new blood vessels. My role in the project is to perform experiments with an in vitro model of angiogenesis over a large time scale. A tissue culture of angiogenesis is grown on top of a microscope over several days, while imaged every hour. This provides experimental data on the behavior of vessels near extracellular matrix (ECM) interfaces. The experimental testing is coupled with computational modeling to aid the investigation by conducting additional experiments, and devising experiments that are difficult or impossible by experimental means. FEBio, our finite element software, is used to solve for the deformation and stresses. AngioFE, an FEBio plugin, is used to update vessel geometries and ECM properties. Altogether, we hope to understand how new blood vessels traverse through ECM, and cross stromal interfaces.