Kshitiz Upadhyay
University of Minnesota, MN·Biomedical Engineering
Blasts and car crashes can deform the brain in milliseconds and cause traumatic brain injury. Predicting that injury with computer models requires knowing how brain tissue stretches and resists force when loaded hard and fast.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Engineering
- Topics
brain biomechanics
traumatic brain injury
tissue mechanics
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2027
What they work on
- Build linear viscoelastic models of brain tissue from several brain regions using wide-band magnetic resonance elastography, an MRI method that measures tissue stiffness with vibrations.
- Develop multi-fidelity models that merge tissue-sample data with narrow-band living-brain measurements to predict in vivo brain properties across a wide range of loading frequencies.
- Develop visco-hyperelastic models of brain tissue under large deformations and extreme strain rates using quasi-static and dynamic mechanical testing.
- Use physics-informed machine learning to fuse large-deformation tissue-sample results with in vivo data, producing full-field maps of living brain mechanical properties under extreme loading.
More about the research
Today's data on living human brains cover only small deformations and a narrow range of loading speeds. Those conditions miss the extreme ones that actually cause injury. This collaborative project aims to understand brain mechanics at high strain rates, meaning very fast deformation, in the brain's natural environment.
Why it matters
Better data on how the living brain deforms in blasts and crashes could improve computer models that predict traumatic brain injury. Such models could help engineers design safer helmets and other protective equipment, and could inform strategies to prevent and manage brain injury in soldiers, drivers and others at risk.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Grace McIlvain
Columbia University, NY·Neuroscience
Establish benchmark structure-function relationships in healthy young adults by relating regional brain stiffness and damping ratio, measured with magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), to performance on cognitive and emotional tasks.
Benxin Wu
Purdue University, IN·Materials Science
Synthesize base metal and carbon nanotube-metal matrix composite specimens using laser-based additive manufacturing and characterize their mechanical properties under quasi-static, slow loading as a baseline for comparison.
James Gibert
Purdue University, IN·Engineering·Early-career
Establish a mathematical framework, using dynamical systems theory with analytical and numerical modeling, for how topology interacts with nonlinear, time-dependent behavior in heterogeneous mechanical metamaterials.
The school
University of Minnesota: 88 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research, 722 research doctorates a year.
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