About

An attraction to mechanical things and cars propelled me to pursue a mechanical engineering degree at The Pennsylvania State University.  After graduating in 2001, I was attracted to work studying car crashes. Over the last 20+ years my career has always focused on safety and injury prevention. Promoting occupant safety through a combination of investigating accidents, conducting laboratory quasi-static and dynamic tests, performing computer modeling and implementing solutions has been very rewarding.

Some of my favorite work has included creating novel ways of testing unique safety systems at the component and full-scale levels to make engineering recommendations regarding safety devices and systems. Along with using industry standard testing, I have also been able to create unique quasi-static and dynamic tests, some of which have become new industry test standards.

Returning to graduate school was an incredible opportunity to supplement over a decade of work experience (since my undergraduate degree) with more education. In 2015, I became a student at the Virginia Tech - Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, studying in the Center for Injury Biomechanics.  In 2017, I received my Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering and in 2019 received my Doctor of Philosophy, also in Biomedical Engineering.  Both of my degrees focused on crash injury biomechanics.
 
Across the years my work has resulted in several patents and many peer reviewed publications, and has included recognition by the Society of Automotive Engineers with the Ralph H. Isbrandt Automotive Safety Engineering Award. I am also a licensed Professional Engineer in North Carolina since 2007 and maintain a National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying Record.