ICRC

The SCIB was established at UAB to improve research on human injury resulting from motor vehicle crashes, and that remains its primary goal. Currently, 17 projects across three research domains are seeking to improve our understanding of human interaction with machines in vehicle crashes. Some of the research projects are not something that an average person might recognize immediately as having a vehicle crash focus. However, all the SCIB’s research taken together promises to improve the understanding of what happens to the human body in a vehicle crash and thus improve research into better safety standards and more accurate post-injury treatment both on the scene and in the hospital setting. It is foundational research, critical to lowering injury rates, increasing survival statistics, and improving human performance and function after injury.

Said simply, the primary goals of SCIB are to lessen the chances you will die or be injured in a vehicle crash, and to improve the chances that if you are injured, you will have as few long-term impairments as possible. The primary focus currently is on injuries to the head, neck and extremities among children and adults.

Research Domain One deals with head and brain injury; the domain director is Dr. David Meaney of the University of Pennsylvania. The main focus of this Domain is to improve the predictive capabilities of a Simulated Injury Monitor, or SIMon, a “next generation” (G2) injury assessment tool developed by Dr. Rolf Eppinger of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA). Essentially, SIMon takes a wide range of data on how the body reacts to a deceleration event, and predicts what type of injuries a specific set of factors (such as speed and point of impact) will cause. A computational model relies on good data, without which its calculations will not be accurate or helpful. The various research projects under Research Domain One are working together to improve the data used to make calculations and to refine and improve the computational power of SIMon.

The overall goal of work in Research Domain Two is to enhance the understanding of neck injury mechanisms. The research projects in this Domain focus specifically on catastrophic neck injury, pediatric neck injuries, and whiplash injuries. One prominent feature in several of the research projects is determining the load tolerances of various configurations of the neck and spine; that is, what level of pressure, impact or deceleration causes injury, and how the interaction of parts of the neck and spine during an injury event result in greater or lesser injury in response to the loading. Some of the projects look at only one facet of the equation, such as the mechanical properties of the cervical spine or the way children’s bodies respond to deceleration and impact events as opposed to the way adult bodies respond. Some of these data will also be used in improving SIMon’s predictive accuracy.

Research Domain Three deals with measuring and assessing human tolerances and looking at the ways the human body responds to traumatic loading. Recognizing that much of the current data on human tolerances – on how varying loads affect muscles, bones, brain and integrated body systems during a deceleration event – are not based on a representative sample of the entire population, this Domain emphasizes assessment of the effects of such variables as aging and population demographics, on load responses. Research in this domain includes projects on both body system responses to injury events and computational assessment tools for increasing the scope and accuracy of future biomechanics research.

Projects and investigators currently active in SCIB research
Projects By Research Domain, Title, Principal Investigator(s) and Institution

Researchers affiliated with the SCIB are very active in their chosen fields. This section provides links to information on their activities and news articles about them, on both SCIB and non-SCIB research.

Dr. Beth Winklestein (University of Pennsylvania) honored by ASME for Contributions to Bioengineering (more)
Professor Barry Myers (Duke University) has been appointed senior associate dean for industrial partnerships and research commercialization at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering. Myers will lead the school’s efforts to increase industry involvement in engineering education, research, technology commercialization and entrepreneurship.
Professor Barclay Morrison and his co-organizer Dale Bass (University of Virginia) are organizing a session on Spine Kinematics and Injury Biomechanics for the 5th World Congress of Biomechanics to be held in Munich, Germany on July 29 - August 4, 2006.
Professor Barclay Morrison and his co-organizers Stephanie Lacour (Princeton University) and Joao Conde (Instituto Superior Tecnico) are organizing a two-day symposium for the Material Research Society Spring 2006 Meeting to be held in San Franscisco on April 17-21, 2006. The title of their symposium is ElectroBiological Interfaces on Soft Substrates.

Philip V. Bayly was installed as the Lilyan and E. Lisle Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering at a March 8 ceremony in Uncas A. Whitaker Hall for Biomedical Engineering. Bayly's research interests involve dynamics in mechanical and biomedical systems. Bayly has been on the faculty of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering since 1993; he holds a joint appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Bayley is the principal investigator of an important SCIB-sponsored project "Biomechanics of Brain Injury: Experimental Studies." The objective of this research effort is to provide experimental data for validation of numerical studies of head injury. Two questions are addressed: First, what are the linear and angular accelerations of the skull during a mild head impact typical of contact sports? Second, how does the brain deform in response to angular acceleration of the skull

2005 News

Professor Barclay Morrison has been invited by the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Wayne State University to give a seminar on December 12, 2005. His seminar will be titled “Hippocampal mechanical properties determined with the atomic force microscope: implications for head injury”.
Professor Barclay Morrison has been invited by the Departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Biomedical Engineering and the Center for Applied Biomechanics at the University of Virginia to give a seminar on December 1, 2005. The title of his seminar will be “Heterogeneous constitutive properties of the hippocampus measured by atomic force microscopy may explain trauma-induced, regional patterns of cell death”.
Professor Barclay Morrison has been invited by the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the City College of New York to give a seminar on November 30, 2005. The title of his seminar will be “In vitro approaches can increase our understanding of head injury biomechanics using atomic force microscopy and an organotypic slice culture model of traumatic brain injury”.
Professor Barclay Morrison has been invited by the Virginia Tech - Wake Forest Center for Injury Biomechanics at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University to give a seminar on November 17, 2005. His seminar will be titled “Are sub-regions of the hippocampus more vulnerable to post-traumatic cell death? Insights from atomic force microscopy and an in vitro model”.
Professor Barclay Morrison presented our latest advances on a stretchable microelectrode array at the 2005 annual National Neurotrauma Society meeting held in Washington, D.C. on November 10 and 11. This project is in collaboration with Professor Sigurd Wagner in the Electrical Engineering Department at Princeton University.
Professor Barclay Morrison gave an invited seminar titled "Brain constitutive properties measured with atomic force microscopy: implications for head injury” to the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology on October 6, 2005.
Dr. Michelle LaPlaca was featured in Science Daily with the DETECT device, which she co-developed with colleague Dr. David Wright. The device allows field testing for concussions. “Portable Tech/Emory Device Checks For Concussions” (Link for the article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/05/050517064332.htm)