School Chair Candidate
Susan Margulies
Professor of Bioengineering
University of Pennsylvania

RESEARCH SEMINAR

" Integrating Computational and Experimental Approaches to Understand Mechanisms of Traumatic Brain Injury and Identify Treatment and Prevention Strategies"

Friday, November 11
1:00 P.M.
Emory University – HSRB E160;    
Video streamed to Georgia Tech – McIntire Room
 

The overall goal of my research program is to determine the mechanical thresholds associated with functional and structural injury in the brain and lung, ultimately to open avenues for injury prevention, intervention and treatment. Our lab pioneered functional and structural injury threshold measurement in the brain and lung to identify mechanisms of traumatic brain and lung injury. The research thrusts are united by a common, integrated approach consisting of experiments to measure cell or tissue function/structure under carefully controlled loading conditions (deformations or forces), complemented by computational models that extend these microscopic findings to a broad range of real-world, macroscopic environments. By integrating across scale and species and across computational and experimental approaches in our novel interdisciplinary platform, we translate basic research to clinical injury prevention and treatment strategies. 

In traumatic brain injury (TBI), we integrate animal experiments, tissue and surrogate tests, clinical studies, and computational models to define biomechanical and molecular cascades, assess outcomes, and develop TBI interventions and treatments for children. By increasing our understanding of how head injuries occur in children, this crucial information enables engineers to design safer protective equipment (e.g. car seats, helmets) for children and provides physicians with tools to assist them in the diagnosis and treatment of head injuries in children.