Igor Efimov

About

Igor Efimov is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medicine (Division of Cardiology) at Northwestern University. His research focuses on the physiological mechanisms of cardiovascular disease and on developing novel therapies for heart diseases, with an emphasis on heart rhythm disorders and heart failure. His laboratory pursues two bioengineering strategies: the development of novel implantable, interventional, and wearable bioelectronic devices for real-time diagnostics and therapy of heart diseases and sudden cardiac death; and the development of bioinformatics and machine learning approaches to diagnose early stages or predisposition to heart disease and to guide the development of new therapies.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Medicine
• Biomedical engineering
• Materials science
• Internal medicine
• Neuroscience
• Nanotechnology
• Biology
• Engineering
• Control engineering

Selected publications

• A transient, closed-loop network of wireless, body-integrated devices for autonomous electrotherapy

  Science · 2022 · 249 citations

  Temporary postoperative cardiac pacing requires devices with percutaneous leads and external wired power and control systems. This hardware introduces risks for infection, limitations on patient mobility, and requirements for surgical extraction procedures. Bioresorbable pacemakers mitigate some of these disadvantages, but they demand pairing with external, wired systems and secondary mechanisms for control. We present a transient closed-loop system that combines a time-synchronized, wireless ne…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Millimetre-scale bioresorbable optoelectronic systems for electrotherapy

  Nature · 2025-04-02 · 76 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• High-resolution liquid metal–based stretchable electronics enabled by colloidal self-assembly and microtransfer printing

  Science Advances · 2025-08-29 · 28 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Liquid metal–based stretchable electronics offer high electrical performance and seamless integration with deformable systems but face challenges in achieving scalable, high-resolution patterning. In this work, we present a method for micropatterning liquid metal particle (LMP) films with feature sizes as small as 5 micrometers by integrating electrostatically enabled colloidal self-assembly and microtransfer printing. The resulting cold-welded LMP micropatterns exhibit exceptional electromechan…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Advances in cardiac devices and bioelectronics augmented with artificial intelligence

  The Journal of Physiology · 2025-07-22 · 4 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Diagnostic bioelectronics such as the electrocardiogram have become increasingly prevalent in the management of cardiovascular diseases like atrial fibrillation. While these devices provide meaningful clinical value, their complex and profuse data output requires considerable labour and training from clinicians to diagnose disease. This abundant production of complex data has made diagnostic bioelectronics a prime target for artificial intelligence (AI) integration. AI-integrated diagnostic bioe…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Acute ischaemia and gap junction modulation modify propagation patterns across Purkinje-myocardial junctions

  Frontiers in Physiology · 2025-05-06 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Background: The Purkinje network is essential for normal electrical impulse propagation in the heart but has also been implicated in ventricular arrhythmias. Previous experimental work has suggested that not all Purkinje-myocardial junctions (PMJs) are active at rest due to source-sink mismatch at the PMJs. Objective: We hypothesized that pathological conditions that cause gap junction uncoupling (e.g., acute ischaemia), would increase the number of active PMJs, leading to more complex activatio…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Comprehensive Structural and Functional Mapping of the Mammalian Cardiac Nervous System

  NIH · $21.4M · 2016–2023

• NIH Grant R01HL067322

  NIH · $3.7M · 2012

• NIH Grant R01HL074283

  NIH · $2.3M · 2009

Frequent coauthors

• Vadim V. Fedorov

  130 shared

• Halina Dobrzynski

  Jagiellonian University

  99 shared

• Mark R. Boyett

  University of Bradford

  98 shared

• Vladimir P. Nikolski

  Medtronic (United States)

  97 shared

• Bastiaan J. Boukens

  Maastricht University

  89 shared

• Mitsuru Yamamoto

  Saitama Medical University

  78 shared

• V. Nikolski

  Medtronic (United States)

  76 shared

• Olivier Bernus

  Electrophysiology and Heart Modeling Institute

  72 shared

Labs

• Efimov LabPI

Similar researchers at Northwestern University

• Milan Mrksichh-100
• Shana Kelleyh-95
• Michael Marklh-88