The Dr Dorothea Sandars Churchill Fellowship to study the impact models used at the world’s leading spine/brain injury biomechanics laboratories

Traumatic spinal cord, spinal column, and brain injury typically have devastating and irreversible long-term consequences. There is a global effort towards understanding the mechanisms underlying these debilitating injuries, but Australian research is hindered by a lack of large-scale impact simulation devices in laboratory environments compatible with human subject and pre-clinical experiments. I visited leading injury biomechanics laboratories in the UK, Europe, and North America, and studied their impact apparatus, and experimental and computational protocols. I acquired a deep understanding of the designs, operation, and logistics associated with these facilities, which will be important in my pursuit for establishing an advanced injury biomechanics facility in South Australia.