NFX #90: Fracture Mechanics & Child Abuse w/ Emily Szabo

Emily Szabo is a mechanical engineering PhD student studying the fracture mechanics of immature bone. While creating a computational finite element model in fulfilment of her master's thesis, she discovered a dearth of literature presenting experimental mechanical data. In her dissertation research, she plans to perform experimental tests to collect this data, then create a more sophisticated computational model.

This research is at the intersection of biomedical and mechanical engineering, while also having strong clinical implications. The clinical need was identified by a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon, who sees young children presenting with femur fractures which  may be due to accidental or non-accidental trauma.

By characterizing immature bone, and then conducting computational analyses simulating trauma conditions leading to bone fracture, she hopes to develop an analysis tool for orthopaedic surgeons to predict the likelihood of a child's fracture due to non-accidental trauma.