Email

craig.rusin@bcm.edu

Positions

Assistant Professor

Pediatrics-Cardiology
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, Texas

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Computational and Applied Mathematics
Rice University
Houston, Texas

Education

BS from Princeton University

06/2001 - Princeton, New Jersey

Chemical Engineering

PhD from University Of Virginia

06/2009 - Charlottesville, Virginia

Chemical Engineering, Applied Nonlinear Dynamics

Postdoctoral Fellowship at University Of Virginia Medical School

01/2010 - Charlottesville, Virginia

Cardiovascular Medicine

Professional Statement

Each day, in hospitals across the country, patients experience life-threatening events. Their survival often depends on the fast reaction of the experienced care providers who watch constantly over them. But all too often, care staff have very little warning of impending deterioration. By the time overt symptoms appear, the damage has already been done. My research focuses on developing computer algorithms which can be used to constantly watch over patients, and provide early warnings of life-threatening events. This is possible because acute decomposition does not manifest instantaneously. It builds up over a short period of time, changing the physiologic dynamics of the patient in the process. These precursors can be subtle and hard for a human to see, given the level of noise in patient data, but a computer can be trained to detect such patterns. By using technology to anticipate such events in real-time, care can be provided proactively instead of reactively, which has tremendous potential for improving survival in critically ill patients. This represents a fundamental shift in the way that traditional patient monitoring and surveillance has been conducted over the last 50 years.

Websites

Selected Publications

• Hu C, Rusin CG, Tan Z, Guagliardo NA, Barrett PQ "Zona glomerulosa cells of the mouse adrenal cortex are intrinsic electrical oscillators.." J. Clin. Invest.. 2012 Jun 1;122(6):2046-53. Pubmed PMID: 22546854
• C.J. Rhee, C.D. Fraser III, K. Kibler, R.B. Easley, D.B. Andropoulos, M. Czosnyka, G.V. Varsos, P. Smielewski, C.G. Rusin, K.M. Brady, J.R. Kaiser "The Ontogeny of Cerebrovascular Pressure Autoregulation in Premature Infants." J. Perinatology.. 2014 Dec;34(12):926-931.
• C.D. 3rd Fraser, K.M. Brady, C.J. Rhee, R.B. Easley, K. Kibler, P. Smielewski, M. Czosnyka, D.W. Kaczka, D.B. Andropoulos, C.G. Rusin "The frequency response of cerebral autoregulation." J Appl Physiol. 2013 Jul;115(1):52-56.
• Rusin CG, Kori H, Kiss IZ, Hudson JL "Synchronization engineering: tuning the phase relationship between dissimilar oscillators using nonlinear feedback." Philos Transact A Math Phys Eng Sci. 2010 May 13;368(1918):2189-204. Pubmed PMID: 20368241

Funding

Real-Time Predictive Physiological Monitoring for Improving Patient Outcomes after Stage I Palliation

Grant funding from Pediatric Heart Network (PHN) Scholar Award, supported by NHLBI

Development of a novel patient monitoring system for post-operative patients after stage I palliation (S1P) to predict unexpected sudden deterioration and allow for early clinical intervention.