Research in traffic collisions leads to Best Oral Presentation award

Mechanical engineering graduate student Angela Tesny took home a top prize at this year’s international Injury Biomechanics Symposium. She was awarded the Margaret H. Hines Best Oral Presentation award.

Competing against 28 other students from 13 institutions, Tesny shared discoveries from her work completed at The Ohio State University’s Injury Biomechanics Research Center. Her presentation—“Quantifying Relative Brain Motion in a Post Mortem Subject”—reported on the superficial brain’s motion during a traffic collision. Her findings are valuable for the development of computational brain models, as well as for improving the understanding of bleeding injuries near the brain’s surface.

Competitors for the award were judged by a group of academic and industry experts on the basis of a written paper and oral presentation. The award was presented by event sponsor Toyota.

“The Injury Biomechanics Symposium was a great opportunity for me to present and receive feedback and support from experts in the injury biomechanics and automotive safety fields,” commented Tesny, who is advised by Yun-Seok Kang.

“It was a meaningful experience to share the research my team and I have been conducting on the injury tolerance of the elderly in sustaining acute subdural hematomas in motor vehicle crashes.” Her work is part of an ongoing initiative of the IBRC to improve safety and reduce injury for elderly drivers.

The annual conference held at Ohio State brings together attendees from academia, industry and other organizations.