The Microcirculation Laboratory at UCSD was founded in 1967 by the late Professor Benjamin W. Zweifach one of the imminent teachers of Bioengineering and Microcirculation in the twentieth century. In 1979, Professor Geert W. Schmid-Schönbein assumed the directorship of the laboratory.

A premise of the laboratory is that important Cardiovascular Diseases are manifest in the microcirculation years before they become evident at the clinical level. The study of the microcirculation is a cornerstone for integration of molecular, genetic, and cellular phenomena with the dynamics in living tissue and whole organ. Microcirculation is a key to the analysis of the origin and progression of cardiovascular disease.

The work in the laboratory is funded primarily by the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation.