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UW NMBL News


May 2013
Congratulations to Jason Franz for being awarded an F32 Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the NIH. The title of his proposal is "Mechanics of the Aging Achilles Tendon with Implications for Walking Performance."

May 2013
Arezu Monawer was awarded the Best Oral Presentation at the Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Research and Design Symposium. The title of her talk was "Redesign and Fabrication of a MR compatible Loading Device to Assess Injury and Surgically Induced Changes in Knee Mechanics." Congrats Arezu!

May 2013
Congratulations to Rachel Lenhart and Laura Chernak who were both recognized with awards from the American College of Sports Medicine Biomechanics Interest Group. Rachel was awarded a Student Research Award and Laura was awarded a Student Travel Award. Both Rachel and Laura will be presenting their work at the upcoming ACSM Conference in Indianapolis later in May.

April 2013
UWNMBL participated in Engineering Expo 2013, and was awarded third place overall for the exhibit titled The Body Machine. Special thanks to Jarred Kaiser and Rachel Lenhart for their hard work organizing our exhibit. Check out some pictures from the exhibit here.

April 2013
Congratulations to Rachel Lenhart who passed her Preliminary Exam in biomedical engineering. Rachel's project proposal is titled "Influence of Surgery on Musculoskeletal Mechanics in Children with Crouch Gait." Rachel also recently earned her Certificate in Global Health as a part of her degree.

February 2013
Rachel Lenhart was awarded a Matching Dissertation Grant from the International Society of Biomechanics! The title of her grant proposal is "Distal Femoral Extension Osteotomy and Patellar Tendon Advancement for the Treatment of Crouch Gait."

January 2013
UWNMBL attended the American Physical Therapy Association Combined Sections Meeting in San Diego, California. Dr. Heiderscheit, Liz Chumanov, Evan Nelson, and Christa Wille presented their work. Liz was recognized for her poster titled "Pelvic Motion During Running is Increased During and Post Pregnancy." Congrats Liz! See her award here.

January 2013
Jarred Kaiser presented an abstract at the annual meeting for the Orthopaedic Research Society in San Antonio, TX. The title of his abstract was "Is the Contralateral Knee a Valid Reference When Quantitatively Assessing Secondary Knee Kinematics?"

January 2013
UWNMBL welcomes new members into the lab! New members include research associate Jason Franz and undergraduate researchers Megan Courtney and Michael Scherer. See our members page for the new member profiles!

January 2013
Congratulations to Jarred Kaiser for successfully passing his PhD Qualifying Exams in Mechanical Engineering!

December 2012
Congratulations to December 2012 UWNMBL Graduate Carrie Francis who earned her Master's Degree in Biomedical Engineering.

November 2012
Congratulations to Anne Schmitz who sucessfully defended her PhD Thesis in Biomedical Engineering Engineering! Her thesis was titled "the importance of including knee joint laxity in dynamic musculoskeletal simulations of movement."

November 2012
UWNMBL was awarded pilot funding from the UW Sports Medicine Classic Fund for a study investigating the use of Shear Wave Elastography in characterizing myofascial trigger points. This project is a collaboration with Dr. Patrick Grabowski from the department of Sports Rehabilitation.

September 2012
Dr. Thelen, along with collaborators in Medical Physics, Radiology and Orthopedics, were awarded a two-year grant from NIH-NIAMS to develop new imaging techniques to investigate cartilage contact and early signs of osteoarthritis following knee surgery (see our funding page for more information).

September 2012
UWNMBL welcomes new members into the lab! New members include: Lindy Couwenhoven, Alex Ehlers, Tanner Marshall, Arezu Monawer, Taylor Powers and Michael Schmidt. See our members page for their profiles!

September 2012
Congratulations to Laura Chernak who was awarded an NIH F31 Pre-Doctoral Fellowship.The focus of her fellowship will be on the use of ultrasound in the evaluation of Achilles tendon mechanics in aging adults.

August 2012
UWNMBL attended ASB 2012! Attendees included Dr. Thelen, Laura Chernak, Jarred Kaiser, Rachel Lenhart and Anne Schmitz.

July 2012
Congratulations to Liz Chumanov for passing her Physical Therapy Boards! Liz completed her Doctor of Physical Therapy degree in May.

June 2012
Dave Bunger sucessfully defended his Master's Thesis in Mechanical Engineering. His thesis was titled "Dynamic loading device for imaging of plantarflexor and Achilles tendon tissue deformation." Congrats Dave!

June 2012
Congratulations to Jarred Kaiser who sucessfully defended his Master's Thesis in Mechanical Engineering. The title of his thesis was "3D Dynamic Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Knee Mechanics."

May 2012
Congratulations to May 2012 UWNMBL Graduates: Chuck Donaldson (BS Biomedical Engineering), Emily Headley (BS Biology), Rachel Lenhart (MS Biomedical Engineering), Paul Milbaier (MS Mechanical Engineering), and Christa Wille (BS Biomedical Engineering).

May 2012
Rachel Lenhart presented her research on the "Influence of Musculoskeletal Geometry on Model-Based Predictions of Plantarflexor Function during Gait" at the Gait and Clinical Movement Society annual conference in Grand Rapids, MI. She recieved a travel grant to cover her caexpenses. While there, she met up with Dr. Thelen and UWNMBL alumna Amy Lenz! [Picture]

May 2012
Congratulations to Arezu Monawer who was awarded the Faustin Prinz Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the Mechanical Engineering Department! Arezu will be using Dynamic MRI to investigate knee kinematics in UW athletes.

May 2012
Daniel Volk received an award for Best Idea at the UW Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Research Symposium for his research developing a novel ultrasound phantom of tendon.

April 2012
Congratulations to Jarred Kaiser and Rachel Lenhart who were both awarded the Alexander Cowie Fellowship from the Department of Mechanical Engineering to support their Graduate Research!

April 2012
Carrie Francis presented her research at the Rocky Mountain Regional Meeting for the American Society of Biomechanics in Boise, Idaho. Her talk was titled "The Effects of Cranial Nerve Non-Invasive Neuromodulation Training on Step Width Variability in Healthy Adults"

April 2012
Congratulations to Rachel Lenhart for successfully passing her PhD Qualifying Exams in Biomedical Engineering!
April 2012
Laura Chernak presented her research on nonuniform motion in the Achilles tendon at the Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering conference in Berlin. Laura was awarded student grants to support her travel.


February 2012
Rachel Lenhart was awarded the Collaborative Research Travel Grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. Rachel proposed using the funds to evaluate the biomechanical implications of the surgical correction of crouch gait, and is planning on collaborating with the Gillette Children's Hospital in St. Paul, MN

February 2012
Laura Chernak was awarded a Matching Dissertation Grant from the International Society of Biomechanics for a proposal on the use of ultrasound elastography to evate strain patterns in tendon.

January 2012
Laura Chernak passed her PhD Preliminary Exam in Biomedical Engineering. Her proposed thesis is titled "Ultrasonic Evaluation of the effects of Aging on the Mechanical Properties of Tendon."

December 2011
Jon Mantes sucessfully defended his Master's Thesis in Mechanical Engineering. The title of his thesis is "The Development of a Knee Motion Phantom to Validate a 3D Dynamic MRI Processing Sequence"

August 2011
Congrats to Kwang Won Choi for sucessfully passing his PhD Qualifying Exam in Mechanical Engineering!

August 2011
Jen Sanfilippo sucessfully defended her Master's Thesis in Biomedical Engineering. Jen has accepted a job with the UW Athletics Department.

August 2011
Rachel Lenhart and Laura Chernak presented at the American Society of Biomechanics 2011 Conference in Long Beach, CA. While at the conference they met up with Dr. Thelen, and UWNMBL alumni Amy Lenz and Amy Silder.

June 2011
Kayt Frisch sucessfully defended her PhD Thesis in Biomedical Engineering. The title of her thesis was "Measuring Regional Changes in Damaged Tendon "


June 2011
Laura Chernak presented her research, "the use of ultrasound elastography to assess regional variations in tendon strain " at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Summer Bioengineering Conference in Farmington, PA.

June 2011
Jen Sanfilippo presented "Strength deficits exist at time of retun to sport following hamstring strain injury" at the American College of Sports Medicine annual conference in Denver, CO. She was among a few selected to present at a special evening Clinical Reception.

June 2011
Rob Bradford successfully defended his Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering. The title of his thesis was "Functional Bilateral Kinematic Symmetry of the Healthy Human Knee Measured by Dynamic MRI."

June 2011
Daniel Volk was awarded the Faustin Prinz Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the Mechanical Engineering department based on his academic achievement and research proposal to design an ultrasound phantom.

May 2011
Congratulations to NMBL May 2011 Graduate: Laura Chernak (MS Biomedical Engineering).

May 2011
Carrie Francis presented on the "Modulation of Forward Propulsion, Support and Center of Pressure via Gastrocnemius Stimulation During Gait" at the Gait & Clinical Movement Analysis Society annual conference in Washington, DC. She was also awarded a student scholarship to cover travel to the conference.

May 2011
Laura Chernak was awarded an ASB Grant-in-Aid for her proposal entitled "Dynamic Imaging of in vivo Tendon Mechanics using Ultrasound Elastography."

May 2011
Rob Bradford presented at the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine meeting in Montreal, Canada. The title of his presentation was "Dynamic Imaging of 3D Knee Kinematics using PC-VIPR and SPGR-VIPR."

April 2011
Joe Collins won the student poster competition at the Wisconsin Physical Therapy Association Spring Conference. The title of his poster was "The Influence of Sport and Prior Injury on Performance of the Star Excursion Balance Test and Vertical Jump."

April 2011
UWNMBL was awarded second place for their exhibit at the Engineering Expo titled "The Body Machine" designed by Jarred Kaiser and Rachel Lenhart

April 2011
Laura Chernak and Carrie Francis passed their BME Ph.D. Qualifying Exams!

April 2011
Dan Volk was awarded a summer grant from Queen's University in Vancouver, Canada for the NSERC-CREATE Training Program in Bone and Joint Health Technologies.

February 2011
Christa Wille presented her research at the American Physical Therapy Combined Sections Meeting in New Orleans, LA. The title of her presentation was "Kinematic measures predict braking impulse and knee joint loading during running"

August 2010
Bryan Heiderscheit and collaborators Alison Brooks and John Beaulieu received an National Institutes of Health grant. The title of the grant is "Increasing Physician Use of Exercise for Treating Osteoarthritis of the Knee"

August 2010
Josh Slane received the Art in Science Award at the 2010 Emed Scientic Meeting held in Providence, RI for his research entitled "Hypothenar Pressure Mapping Provides Insight for Reducing Ulnar Nerve Compression in Cyclists."

May 2010
Congratulations to May 2010 NMBL Graduates: Chelsey Erickson (MS Mechanical Engineering), Nathan Kleinhans (MS Biomedical Engineering) and Amy Lenz (BS Biomedical Engineering).

May 2010
Darryl Thelen and collaborators Yasin Dhaher and Dan Negrut received National Science Foundation grant. The title of the grant is "Multi-Domain Computational Framework for Simulating Musculoskeletal Systems"

May 2010
Amy Lenz successfully defended her Honors Thesis in Biomedical Engineering. The title of her thesis was "Dynamic Hamstring Function during Gait."

May 2010
Anne Schmitz successfully passed her PhD Preliminary Exam in Biomedical Engineering. The title of her thesis proposal is "Integrating Multibody Dynamics and Computational Modeling."

April 2010
Christa Wille received a 2010-2011 Wisconsin Hilldale Undergraduate Research Fellowship. The title of her research proposal is "Can Step Rate Manipulation Reduce Knee Joint Loading in Runners with Anterior Knee Pain."

December 2009
Christopher Westphal successfully defended his MS Thesis entitled "Load Dependent Variations in Knee Kinematics Measured with Dynamic MRI."

September 2009
Amy Silder received the Outstanding Young Investigator Award at the 2009 Multi-Scale Muscle Mechanics Workshop held in Woods Hole, MA.

August 2009
Kyle Gleason, Amy Silder and Darryl Thelen won the first American Society of Biomechanics 5K Lab Challenge held in conjunction with the 2009 ASB Meeting at Penn State University.

August 2009
Amy Silder received the Young Scientist Pre-Doctoral Award at the 2009 American Society of Biomechanics meeting held at Penn State University for her research entitled "The Influence of Prior Hamstring Injury on Musculotendon Morphology and Muscle Contraction Mechanics"

August 2009
Amy Silder successfully defended her PhD Dissertation entitled "Effects of Prior Hamstring Injury on Morphology, Mechanics and Function."

July 2009
Antonio Hernandez successfully defended his PhD Dissertation entitled "In vivo Dynamic Function of Lower Extremity Human Biarticular Muscles as Measured by Novel Electrical Stimulation Protocols Juxtaposed to Computational Perturbation Studies."

May 2009
Elizabeth Chumanov was selected as the recipient of the 2009 ACSM BIG-AMTI Student Research Award , which is to be presented to her by the Biomechanics Interest Group at the 2009 American College of Sports Medicine Meeting in Seattle, WA.

April 2009
Amy Lenz received the Outstanding Undergraduate Research Poster Award at the 2009 UW Department of Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Research Symposium. Her poster was entitled "Improving the Understanding and Treatment of Walking Deficits Following Stroke."

April 2009
Elizabeth Chumanov successfully defended her PhD Dissertation entitled "Dynamic Simulation of Musculotendon Mechanics during High Speed Running."

December 2008
Martin Schultze successfully defended his Master's Thesis entitled "Central Pattern Generators as a Biologically Inspired Neural Control Mechanism for Bicycle Pedaling."

November 2008
Bryan Heiderscheit was named an Associate Editor of the Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy.

September 2008
Judy Dewane was awarded the UW Institute on Aging's 2008 Outstanding Young Investigator.

August 2008
Andrew Sterling successfully defended his Master's Thesis in Mechanical Engineering entitled "Cervical Spine Motion and the Biomechanical Influence of Vertebral Fusion."

August 2008
Amy Silder, Darryl Thelen, Michael Tuite and Bryan Heiderscheit were awarded the National Collegiate Athletic Association Best Poster Award for Student-Athlete Wellbeing for their research entitled "Long-Term Morphological And Functional Changes Following An Acute Hamstring Strain Injury."

August 2008
Antonio Hernandez received the President's Award for best poster at the North American Congress of Biomechanics Meeting for his research entitled "Measurement Of Dynamic Muscle Function Via Electrical Stimulation Synchronized To The Gait Cycle."

August 2008
Darryl Thelen was elected Program Chair for the 2010 American Society of Biomechanics Meeting.

July 2008
Amy Silder successfully passed her PhD Preliminary Exam in Biomedical Engineering. The title of her thesis proposal is "Injury-Related Changes in Musculotendon Morphology and Mechanics."

July 2008
Anne Schmitz was awarded a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship by the UW Institute on Aging.

June 2008
Elizabeth Chumanov was awarded a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship by the AAUW Educational Foundation.

April 2008
Sally Bobula, Judy Dewane and Bryan Heiderscheit were awarded Best Research Poster at the Wisconsin Physical Therapy Association spring meeting for their research entitled "Variability of stride duration increases in older adults under dual-task conditions.".

December 2007
UW NMBL was awarded a 2 year medical research grant by the National Football League Charities for their proposal entitled "Rehabilitation of Acute Hamstring Strain Injuries: Effects of Treatment on Muscle Morphology, Running Mechanics and Reinjury Potential."

September 2007
Amy Silder was awarded the UW Institute on Aging's 2007 Outstanding Young Investigator.

September 2007
UW NMBL was awarded a 4 year grant by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) for their R01 proposal entitled 'Biocomputation of the Links Between Muscle Morphology, Coordination and Injury'. This research is being performed in collaboration with the Multiscale Muscle Mechanics Laboratory at the University of Virginia and Simbios, a National Center for Biocomputation at Stanford University.

September 2007
UW NMBL was awarded a 2 year grant by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) for their phase II SBIR proposal entitled "Internet Delivery of Animated Rehabilitation Exercises (IDARE)." This research is being performed in collaboration with Visual Health Information, Inc.

June 2007
Jackson Potter successfully defended his Master's Thesis in Biomedical Engineering entitled 'Bicycle Seat Pressure Distribution During Seated Cycling, and the Effects of Gender, Power and Hand Position'.

May 2007
Christopher Westphal and Eric Bader were awarded a Tong Follow-up Development Award by the UW Department of Biomedical Engineering for their design project entitled "A Device for Inducing Active Lengthening Muscle Contractions for Dynamic MR Imaging."

May 2007
Joe Farron successfully defended his Master's Thesis in Mechanical Engineering entitled "Measurement of Tendon Strain During Muscle Twitch Contractions Using Ultrasound Elastography."

May 2007
Ben Whittington successfully defended his Master's Thesis in Mechanical Engineering entitled "Utilization of Lower Extremity Stiffness During Human Walking."

May 2007
Bryan Heiderscheit was awarded the American Physical Therapy Association's 2007 Margaret L. Moore Award for Outstanding New Academic Faculty Member.

December 2006
David Remy successfully defended his Master's Thesis in Mechanical Engineering entitled "Integration of an Adaptive Ground Contact Model Into the Dynamic Simulation of Gait."

UW Neuromuscular Biomechanics Lab
Email to: Darryl Thelen Last Updated: 5/18/2013