I received my Mechanical Engineering undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During my schooling, I explored many opportunities to apply my engineering degree. I was involved with the Formula One Racecar Team, did a semester long co-op working on fume hoods, did a summer internship at Kimberly Clark designing a HVAC system, and did another summer internship at General Electric designing anesthesia equipment. As a senior, I got involved in research doing finite element analyses of a prosthetic foot. This immediately got me hooked on applying engineering to medical applications.
I obtained my Biomedical Engineering PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My work focused on computational biomechanics. More specifically, developing musculoskeletal models of the body to simulate movement and see how surgery and soft tissue injury affects movement. During my graduate work, I was also a teaching assistant for Introduction to Biomechanics where I developed a love for teaching. I then did postdoctoral research at the University of Kentucky where I experimentally measured movements (e.g running form), which provides data that can be used to validate the models I build. Here at Gannon University, I will continue building computational models with a focus on the knee to optimize surgical techniques (e.g. ACL reconstruction) to restore normal function after injury. When I'm not doing research, I enjoy going swimming and playing my violin.