November 14, 12:45pm, Room 111 Robert A. Pritzker Science Center
One of the most serious impediments to the study of traumatic injury is the lack of meaningful primary mechanical damage criteria at the molecular level in TBI, heart ventricular diseases and joint injuries. Similarly so, for conditions based on prolific pathologies, such as arthritis, cancer and autoimmune diseases.
Through the use of novel imaging technologies such as a newly developed X-ray Diffraction (XRD) scanning methodology, applied to systemically loaded animal models of both brain and connective tissue injury and accompanied by conventional microscopy for cross-correlation of observations, we seek to acquire these data. Interestingly, these same techniques reveals the state and status of soft tissue preserved in T-rex fossilized bone. Combined with nanoscopic level structural data obtained from non-injured, contemporary tissues, our research group seeks to help define more accurate models of mammalian tissues in health and disease from the atomistic through large scale for use in emerging advanced computational approaches.