Last Updated February 2007.
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The overall goal of our laboratory is to understand the influence of mechanical factors on the function and structure of human tissues from the macroscopic to microscopic level, with an emphasis on the brain and lungs, ultimately to open avenues for injury prevention, intervention and treatment. The research conducted in the Injury Biomechanics Lab, under the direction of Dr. Susan Margulies, is unified under the umbrella of biomechanics, and utilizes an integrated approach consisting of experiments to measure cell and tissue function/structure under carefully controlled loading conditions (deformations or forces), complemented by mathematical models that extend these experimental findings to a broad range of real-world environments. Work in the laboratory has yielded fundamental information about the mechanical properties of the brain and skull, in vivo deformations of the brain and lung, and the cellular response to deformations which accompany lung inflation.