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Emergency Medicine ResearchUniversity of Virginia

Emergency Medicine ResearchUniversity of Virginia

Injury biomechanics

How crashes injure people, from real cases to safer design.

What we ask
Crash conditionsClinical dataHeadwhich markers?Thoraxhow severe?
  • Which crash conditions produce which injuries, and in whom?
  • How severe are thoracic injuries in motor vehicle crashes, and how should they be assessed?
  • Which markers help assess a head injury after trauma?
IllustrationA crash case, linked to the injuries of the person inside it.

The problem

The problem

Our physicians work with UVA’s Center for Applied Biomechanics, one of the engineering centers of NHTSA’s Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN), linking real crash cases to clinical data to understand how injuries happen and how to prevent them.

A crash-test car hitting a barrier, an instrumented dummy at the wheel and its deceleration pulse on a floating chart

Focus areas

What this work wants to know

  1. Which crash conditions produce which injuries, and in whom?

  2. How severe are thoracic injuries in motor vehicle crashes, and how should they be assessed?

  3. Which markers help assess a head injury after trauma?

Studies, papers & news

Featured work

People

Who works on this

Faculty whose research connects to this area, and the investigators who lead its studies.

Meet everyone

  • Mark R. Sochor, MD, MS, FACEP

    Associate Professor & Medical Director, Center for Applied Biomechanics

    Research interests: Injury Biomechanics · Motor Vehicle Crashes · Blunt Force Trauma · Forensic Radiology

  • Thomas R. Hartka, MD, MS, MSDS

    Associate Professor & EMRO Director

    Research interests: Injury Prediction · Crash Biomechanics · Data Science · Prehospital Triage

Study leads

  • Josh Easter, MDPrincipal investigator · HeadSMART II

Get involved

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Bring a question, a technology to test, or yourself as a participant.

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