Five Questions with

I work within the BME (BioMechanical Engineering) department and assist Dr. Scott Tashman in the BioMotion Lab. Actually, I get the opportunity to work with almost all of the doctors at one point or another. Anyone who is interested in doing research at SPRI jumps at the chance to work with the variety of outstanding doctors and scientists that are here.  My first year-and- a-half, I was in the cadaver lab because the BioMotion lab did not yet exist as we know it. I was exposed to a lot of cadaveric studies on every major joint — the foot and ankle, knee, hip and shoulder – which gave me a lot of clinical background before I moved down to the BioMotion Lab which opened earlier this year.

It’s awesome. It’s really unique. I would even call it one of a kind.  A lot of the equipment that we have can be found in other labs; however, what you don’t have in other labs are the world-class doctors at the Clinic. Our doctors are so well known that the patients look up to them with great respect and will listen to them when they come in for consultation, treatment, or rehab.  We are definitely on the cutting edge with what we do here, and the doctors encourage that and demonstrate that with how they treat their patients.

There is so much ahead of us. I’m particularly excited to see how we can implement things we learn inside of the lab and take that outside the lab.  I think that is the next door that hasn’t fully been opened in sports biomechanics. We can take people outside of the lab and into their authentic sporting environments. With wearable sensors, we can see and measure what they are doing as they perform their activity away from the lab - when they are not being watched, observed, or on camera.   We want to be able to measure their motion when they are feeling comfortable in their normal surroundings and not feeling the stress of being in a lab.

I’ve always thought in my studies that you don’t just look at one part of the human body. It’s whole and it has many different moving parts. It’s why we have our various departments here.  For example, it can start in the surgical skills lab when a surgeon has a new idea for a repair. Since they obviously can’t try new things out on patients right away, we can test their ideas in the cadaver lab on our robot and Instron machine. If a new way of treating something turns out to better than the old way, the surgeons can start implementing that in their practice. We can then analyze their movements in the BioMotion lab and, working with the outcomes department, we can follow up with these patients to see how they are faring six months, one year, five years down the road. The imaging department works with us to interpret MRI scans and to develop newer and better techniques for looking at a particular joint.  We can also work directly with our physical therapists as they design and implement rehab plans for our recovering patients.  Everybody here brings their different strengths, their knowledge, and their passion and ideas, and from that we can really hone in on what the body is doing in a specific movement.

The people, for sure.  Also, I love being in the mountains.  But the people are the most important.  I’m part of a great team. We love working together and we hang out together. There are a bunch of bright minds here, and you can’t have it any better than that.