Dr. Coats recently received NSF funding to investigate progresssive damage at the brain-skull interface. The study involves high-rate testing and imaging of repeated loading in the subarachnoid trabeculae and blood vessels. Constituitve formulations of damage progression will be created and integrated into our multi-scale computational framework to predict progresssion of brain strain during repeated head...
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Congratulations to Elizabeth (Lizzie) Su for a successful UROP research experience and presentation! Lizzie used convolutional neural networks to predict injury prior to standard methods of detection. Results found that injury could be detected earlier than standard optical coherence tomography imaging. She is currently working on a variety of parameters to improve predictions with the...
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Name: Nathan Bartlett Hometown: Las Vegas Previous Degrees, Institutions: BS (in progress), University of Utah, Bioengineering Research Interests/Project: Three-dimensional analysis of skull fracture patterns Interests outside of Research: Baseball, skiing, hiking, weightlifting, running, and basketball Honors/Awards: Recipient of the Academic Achievement, Utah Heritage, and Utah Legacy Scholarships 15 minutes of fame: I was the MVP of the championship game for my...
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Congratulations to Mohammad Homayounpour, PhD Graduate of Dr. Andrew Merryweather’s Ergonomics and Safety group on his publication Cervical muscle activation characteristic and head kinematics in males and females following acoustic warnings and impulsive head forces published in Annals of Biomedical Engineering. Sex, head and neck posture, and cervical muscle preparation are contributing factors in...
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Congratulations to PhD Graduate Nik Benko on his publication Mechanical characterization of the human pia-arachnoid complex published in the Journal of Mechanical Behavior and Biomedical Materials. In this study, Nik quantified the normal traction modulus of the pia-arachnoid complex (PaC) in five post-mortem human subjects using hydrostatic fluid pressurization in combination with optical coherence tomography. This study is the first...
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Congratulations to Jiawei Yan on his recent publication The effect of impact angle and fall height on skujl fracture patterns in infants published in the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering. The objectives of this research were to utilize a newly developed linear elastic fracture mechanics finite element model of infant skull fracture to investigate the effect of impact...
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Dr. Brittany Coats, Nik Benko and Joseph Phillips attended the 2021 SB3C conference virtually to present research from our lab to other bioengineers around the world. The conference was held virtually in the SB3C2021 Gather.Town Conference World. Nik gave a presentation on real-time reduced order model for estimating brain strain from head impact kinematics. Joseph presented his preliminary work imaging and manipulating...
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Kiffer Creveling successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation in Mechanical Engineering in front of his graduate committee as well as family and friends on zoom. His dissertation, Characterization and Modeling of Vitreoretinal Adhesion in the Eye, takes the first step in identifying human morphological and mechanical differences in age- and region-related vitreoretinal adhesion, understanding the microstructure, and modeling of...
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Nik Benko successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation in Mechanical Engineering in front of his graduate committee as well as family and friends on zoom. His dissertation, Mechanical Characterization of the Brain-Skull Interface with Applications to Predictions of Axonal Injury, takes the first step in identifying morphological and mechanical differences in the pia-arachnoid complex of the brain to help better...
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Dr. Brittany Coats, Jiawei Yan, and Mitch Metcalf attended the 2020 SB3C conference virtually to present research from our lab to other bioengineers around the world. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the conference switched to being virtual. Jiawei gave a presentation on his work evaluating the effect of bone thickness on skull fracture in infants. Mitch presented on the anisotropic...
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