Area of Expertise: Biomedical Engineering
Joel Stitzel Jr., PhD
Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Stitzel's current research interests involve crash injury research and engineering biomechanics of trauma, automotive safety, and sports and military biomechanics. A major project he has been involved in is the creation of a new generation of human body models to represent live humans with precision and detail not known in research "dummies" before. The models will contain detailed representation of the bones and soft tissues of the human body, with special attention to those parts that are frequently injured in vehicle collisions. They are expected to provide researchers with crucial knowledge needed to better predict the effect of different degrees of force and locations of impact on the body during an automobile crash than they have been able to do with traditional crash test dummies.