National Biomechanics Day 2023 (aka MSEN Day)
This year, rather than hosting our own event, we were asked by the organizers of the NC Math and Science Education Network (MSEN) to do an expo event as part of their annual MSEN Day. This event brought over 300 students from 6th through 12th grade from across the state to NC State’s campus for a day of competition, fun, and science! About half of these students rotated through our expo, having time to browse through our wide array of biomechanics-focused activities. Due to pre-planned travel, pending exams, and the event date having to be rescheduled, much of our group was unavailable to help. But Jacque, Jason, Katie, and Kyla were awesome enough to help out and did a great job engaging the students with some biomechanics.
You can learn more about the MSEN program here and National Biomechanics Day here.
Breaking Bones: we used a hand-crank 3 point bending system to show how different materials might have different properties, and how we can measure things like failure.
Kyla demonstrates how we can use a laser doppler flowmeter to measure blood flow.
A student tries to lift a pole with a 5lb bag of flower taped to it at different distances from the fulcrum to demonstrate the idea of muscle moment arm, and how that distance affects strength (force).
There were also plenty of non-OML-led activities for everyone to check out
These 3D stacking puzzles help students think about how we can make a 3D model from 2D images
A student checks out an interactive arm model to learn how muscles work together to move the arm
Demonstrating a powered exoskeleton that can be controlled with an app
Group photo
Group photo with Jacque!
NCUR 2023
In 2023, the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) was held in Wisconsin at UW-Eau Claire. OML usually is well-represented at this event, but this year we practically took over! Brooke, Deeqa, Katie, Kathryn, Amanda, and Steven all represented OML and NC State this year. They had talks and posters and pretty much knocked it out of the park. We’re so proud!
Happy Holidays from OML
From our group to yours, happy holidays!
Pumpkins!
In what has become an annual tradition, we had an OML pumpkin carving party on the oval once again. Due to scheduling conflicts we didn’t have quite as many people as we usually do, but those who did join had a great time and created some masterpieces!
Steph’s 15-Year Work Anniversary
A quick post to give a shoutout to Stephanie, who has been at NC State for 15 years! She is an integral part to our lab’s success and we don’t know what we’d do without her. To celebrate we had cupcakes outside on a beautiful day and got Steph a sparkly purple hat – the next best thing to a bejeweled crown.
Congratulations to Dr. Yihan Huang!
Yihan, who is co-advised by Jacque and Dr. Martin King in the College of Textiles, defended her dissertation yesterday and received an unconditional pass. We’re so proud!
Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium
We had a whopping 6 undergrads present at the 2022 Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium! Or maybe only five, technically, since Christina is technically part of Kate Saul’s Lab. We’re so proud of all of them.
Graduation – Spring 2022
OML is very proud to have had two of our amazing undergrads graduate last weekend.
Vince will be heading to Madison, Wisconsin, to be a technical solutions engineer at Epic Systems. He will be be working with clients to implement changes to improve Epic’s healthcare database software.
Jennifer is will be working as a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) in the Raleigh area during her gap year and applying to medical schools for fall 2023. This summer she’s going to stick around the lab to help us out, so we’re relieved to not be losing her quite yet!
Spring OUR Symposium
We had two undergrads present posters at the Spring OUR (Office of Undergraduate Research) symposium. Kathryn presented her research with Sandra to optimize the Bone-On-Chip device, and Deeqa talked about her Finite Element Modeling work with Jason. Great job ladies!
National Biomechanics Day 2022
Last Friday we celebrated National Biomechanics Day at NC State. We missed the official National Biomechanics Day (April 6) due to travel and other obligations, so we opted to hold our event a few weeks later. But we’re pretty sure the students didn’t mind.
This year we decided to re-envision the event from what we’ve done in the past. In previous years, we’ve had an expo-style event with labs leading short demos or activities related to their research. These events had 100-200 attendees. But this year we wanted to foster more meaningful connections with attendees, so we pared it down to 35 students and guided them through an engineering challenge. We chose the one from Teach Engineering made by Biomedical Engineers at UVA (find it here). It’s the year 2050 and Bill was hit by a car. A section of his bone, muscle, and skin were damaged beyond repair and need to be totally replaced by 3D bioprinting. The students have been hired as biomedical engineers to help print bone, muscle, and skin grafts for Bill.
We divided the students into groups of four, where they first brainstormed the problem, reading over information on their tissue type and thinking about how they could print it. They then broke into groups, assembled their bioprinters, and then got to making solutions.
Showing off their designs:
The amazing Plaster of Paris wranglers. By the end of the day, none of their clothing had been spared from the wrath of Plaster of Paris powder!
At the end of the day, the groups all shared out their designs. We also had a teacher help us award a “superlative” to each group. The winners included:
- Perseverance in the face of glue that wouldn’t stick
- Most laughing
- Runniest plaster masterpiece
- Most creative
- Muscle masterpiece
- Fantastic femur
Group Photo:
