Cherice Hill
University of Rochester, NY·Biomedical Engineering·Early-career
Temporomandibular disorders (TMDs), painful problems of the jaw joint, affect as many as 10 million U.S. adults.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
Engineering
- Topics
temporomandibular disorders
temporomandibular joint
temporomandibular disc derangement
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Measure mechanical properties, such as stiffness, of the human temporomandibular lateral capsule-ligament (LCL) complex, and test for differences between females and males and between African American and white donors.
- Characterize chemical properties of the LCL complex across sexes and racial groups, as potential risk or resilience factors for disc derangement in the jaw joint.
- Build finite element models, computer simulations of force distribution, to test how sex- and race-specific LCL properties change the loading environment of the temporomandibular joint.
More about the research
Women get them more often than men. African Americans develop TMDs at higher rates, yet fewer of them have the condition at any given time, compared with white Americans. The reasons for these sex and race differences are largely unknown. Earlier work by this team found sex differences in the stiffness and fixed charge density of the human temporomandibular disc, the cartilage pad inside the joint. This raises the possibility that other joint tissues also differ by sex and race.
Why it matters
Understanding how jaw joint ligaments differ by sex and race could help explain why women and African Americans experience temporomandibular disorders differently. It could also make risk estimates apply better across diverse populations. Over the long term, the work aims to support individualized risk assessment for jaw joint disc derangement.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
David Reed
University of Illinois Chicago, IL·Biology
Test whether injury-induced loss of Collagen VI drives cartilage degeneration in a surgically induced mouse model of TMJ osteoarthritis.
Raffaella De Vita
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Biomedical Engineering
Characterize the mechanical interplay of the uterus, cervix and vagina in mice, in living animals and removed tissue, using biaxial inflation testing with digital image correlation, multiphoton microscopy, 3D ultrasound and MRI.
Luka Pocivavsek
University of Chicago, IL·Biomedical Engineering
Develop a geometric classification of aortic shapes by using computer-vision tools to reduce CTA scans of normal and dissected aortas to distributions of shape index and curvedness, two measures of surface form.
The school
University of Rochester: 38 labs on PI Pages, $492M a year on research, 308 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.