UVA Center for Applied Biomechanics

I started interning at the UVA Center for Applied Biomechanics during my third year at UVA. After taking my Strength of Materials Class with Dr. Richard Kent and hearing about some of his biomechanics work, I knew I had to get involved. While I was always interested in working at the intersection of mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, and medicine, this was my first exposure to the biomechanics field. I reached out to Dr. Jason Forman at the CAB where I began working on one of his research projects studying automotive safety for pregnant women. I worked with him throughout the spring semester and then continued my work into a full-time summer internship at the CAB in 2024.

During my internship, I got to work on a range of different projects. I contributed to an Army Research Lab project about cyclic loading of the femur where I potted several femurs with strain gauges and helped compression test them on the Instron. I also assisted in an automobile crash test project studying ankle injury where I got to learn the basics of sled testing. For these specific tests we were interested in an oblique setup where the sled was angled slightly, so I got to help disassemble and reassemble the sled which was very cool! The coolest part of this for me was the attention to detail that went into weighing all of the elements that were taken off and added onto the sled. This is something that I wouldn’t have known was such a big part of the process, but makes total sense. I also loved the hands-on work that I got to do on the sled. Whether it was drilling, guessing bolt sizes, soldering, or assembling, it was nice to use some of the many fabrication skills I have gathered from robotics and other activities over the years.

During my time at CAB, I also got to participate in some pedestrian crash testing where we crashed dummies into a giant truck and used Vicon motion capture to track their movement. I got very familiar with the Vicon markers as I helped label all of them and put together the videos showing the dummy’s motion. I also got to assist in the 3D scanning of the truck before and after the testing, and it was super interesting to see the way the before and after images overlay to show deformation (genius!).

I loved participating in all of this work, however, the main project I have been involved in is the Pregnant Occupant Study. This project aims to collect numerical data on seatbelt use and seat positioning among pregnant drivers, as well as their experiences. While data collection and measurement organization were important, a significant portion of my time was dedicated to effectively communicating with volunteers, using problem-solving skills under pressure, and determining the best way to address the key biomechanical questions we were interested in. It also taught me the rigor and structure that is involved in doing research studies involving human volunteers. I am honored I get to participate in such ground-breaking work to help make automobile safety more inclusive.