Objectives

The primary goal of the HPNEL facility is to study various brain, muscle, and spinal injuries and disabilities, rehabilitation and therapeutic interventions, and human-centric designs of helmets, prosthetics, implants, robotics, and occupational tasks. Our expertise lies in biomechanics, multiscale brain topological modeling, neuro-engineering, finite element modeling, OpenSim musculoskeletal modeling, neuromuscular fatigue modeling, computer-aided design,  and control theory.

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Approach

Our approach includes both experimental and computational methods to investigate brain and muscle responses to external mechanical loads, with the purpose of creating unprecedented scientific knowledge on multiscale, multiphysics brain injury mechanisms and associated motor impairments.  We first study brain-muscle interaction dynamics for a given biomedical problem and then transform the brain-muscle responses into a mathematically grounded engineering framework.  Our research impacts the convergence of engineering and medicine. 

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• Experimental:  Biomedical experimentations using biodynamic and neurophysiological measurement equipment

• Theoretical: Population-specific mathematical and statistical modeling of neuromuscular responses, brain mechano-electrical responses, and spinal kinematics and kinetics.

• Simulation: Focus on finite element and OpenSim-associated in-silico simulations to understand both mechano-physiological and neural effects in order to derive engineering and therapeutic solutions. ​