Saffie is a thesis based bioengineering graduate student focusing in disease modeling and cardiac engineering. Saffie is a part of several different projects headed by the Mack and Regnier laboratories at SLU, with an emphasis on the development of mechanical, calcium, and structural dysfunction in muscle from disease models studying Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and distal arthrogryposis (DA). In addition to studying these disease models, he is very interested in small molecule development for treating cardiac failure with an emphasis on utilizing 2-deoxy-ATP (dATP) as a nucleotide therapy to reduce the depressive effects that acidosis has on cardiac muscle function through improved myosin head positioning and myosin-actin crossbridge binding affinity.