Hypertension is a major risk factor for strokes and heart attacks, which are leading causes of death.  This prevalent disease can be treated with lifestyle changes and medication.  However, hypertension detection and control rates are unacceptably low, especially in low resource settings.  Advanced blood pressure monitoring technology may be essential to improving hypertension management.  We introduce new methods to measure central blood pressure (i.e., blood pressure near the heart) non-invasively, arm cuff blood pressure automatically, and blood pressure without using a cuff.  We demonstrate that these methods can be significantly more accurate or convenient than today’s state-of-the-art in patients and healthy adults.  Ultimately, we hope to bring the advanced blood pressure monitoring technology to practice.

Ramakrishna Mukkamala received the B.S.E. degree in Biomedical/Electrical Engineering from Duke University, Durham, NC, in 1993 and the S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, in 1995 and 2000.  He was a Postdoctoral Fellow/Research Engineer at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology from 2000 to 2002.  Since then, he has been on the faculty of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, where he is currently a Professor.  His research interests include biomedical signal processing and identification, modeling of physiologic systems, cardiovascular physiology, and patient monitoring.  Dr. Mukkamala was a recipient of an AHA Scientist Development Grant, an NSF CAREER Award, and an MSU Teacher-Scholar Award.  He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, the Editor of the Cardiovascular and Respiratory Systems Engineering Theme of the IEEE EMBS Conference Proceedings, and a member of the IEEE EMBS Technical Committee on Cardiopulmonary Systems.