Brooke Awarded NSF GRFP
Congratulations to OML Alum Brooke, who was awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Her project, titled “Soft Tissue Variability as a Predictor of Thoracic Injury in Motor Vehicle Collisions,” extends the Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN) study and incorporates machine learning to better understand how soft tissue characteristics influence injury risk in vehicle collisions. This innovative work has the potential to advance injury biomechanics and improve motor vehicle safety.
You can see the announcement from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine on LinkedIn.
National Biomechanics Day 2026
Yesterday we again welcomed the students from the Wake Young Men’s Leadership Academy to EB3 to show them some of the cool stuff you can do and study related to biomechanics. We all had a great time!
The NBD volunteers and our guests.
Kyla Defends
Kyla aced her defense on Friday! She presented her research as part of the BPBI project, guided by her committee: Jacque and Kate Saul as cochairs, plus Matt Fisher and Derek Kamper, also from BME. Congratulations Kyla!
Catherine Presents at SNCURCS
Catherine recently presented her research with Gabby at the State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium (SNCURCS). Her research looked at the effects of sphingoside-1-phosphate (S1P) on bone and vascular cells.
In addition to the presentation, Catherine was also awarded funding through BME’s Abrams Scholars Program and the NC State Office of Undergraduate Research. Amazing!
Declan, Zack Present at Summer OUR Symposium
OML had two undergrads present at the NC State Summer Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium– Zack presented on his work with Gabby and Declan presented his work with Kyla. Great job guys!
Athens Drive STEM Camp
This year we continued our partnership with Athens Drive, leading an activity at their week-long spinal muscle atrophy-focused STEM camp. We once again taught them about spinal curvature using pool noodles and resistance bands to model SMA.
Our word cloud this year didn’t have quite as many different responses as last year, but we still enjoyed hearing what the kids thought ‘Biomechanics’ meant.
All in all, we’re calling it a success!
Graduation 2025
Congratulations to recent OML graduates: Brooke, Josh, Marisa, Isabel, Jason, and our most recent PhD: Dr. Sandra Stangeland-Molo. We didn’t get photos of everyone, unfortunately, but we did get some. We’re so proud of everyone!
National Biomechanics Day 2025
We once again hosted our annual National Biomechanics Day event on April 9. We opted not to partner with MSEN Day this year and go back to our ‘classic’ format instead. This meant that rather than having an hour, we had a whole 2.5 hours with the students! We had 30 high school students from the nearby Wake Young Men’s Leadership Academy come to EB3. They rotated through 8 different labs’ activities: 5 in the lab itself and 3 in a common space. We liked being able to bring the students into the labs and also having more time with them to show them some of the cool research that we do.
Our student visitors:
Some of the amazing volunteers:
Five Students Present at NCUR 2025
We had five students present at the 2025 National Council of Undergraduate Research conference in early April in Pittsburgh, PA. All of them talked about their work on the BPBI project.
- Brooke gave a talk titled “Development of excess extracellular collagen in biceps, subscapularis, and supraspinatus muscles following brachial plexus birth injury”
- Jason also gave a talk, titled “Evaluating Cartilage Degeneration And Glenohumeral Joint Alterations After Brachial Plexus Birth Injury”
- Josh presented a poster on his research: Effects of Brachial Plexus Birth Injury on Muscle Spindle Morphology
- Isabelle also presented a poster: Effects of Brachial Plexus Birth Injury on Bone Resorption in a Rodent Model
- Marisa presented her research: Myokine Expression in Subscapularis, Supraspinatus, and Biceps Muscles following Brachial Plexus Birth Injury
BMES 2024
The annual Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) conference was pretty nearby this year in Baltimore. Our department had a whopping 46 presenters this year, including a few from OML.
