NC State’s April 2019 event brought 140 high school students and their teachers to Centennial Campus for demonstrations and lab tours, to learn about Biomechanics and interact with NC State scientists. The event is sponsored by the American Society of Biomechanics and is designed to open doors and minds to the field of biomechanics. Also, NC State National Biomechanics Day targets students who don’t get as much exposure to science and engineering, in hopes to expand the participant base beyond a 10-mile radius of the campus.
BME assistant professor at UNC and NC State Jacque Cole said that “Biomechanics is a very broad, active area of research on human movement that ranges from the cellular and molecular level all the way up to designing orthotics and joint replacements. But training doesn’t exist until you get to the senior undergraduate level or sometimes the graduate level, depending on the program and the university. So many high school students have never heard of it. We host this event to get young people excited about biomechanics, open their eyes to it as a career opportunity and perhaps help advance the field.”
The university began hosting National Biomechanics Day a few years ago, but the event continues to grow, especially after the format changed from focusing on lab tours to a hands-on experience. During the event at the Engineering Building III, student and faculty volunteers gave demonstrations on everything from bone fracture healing to 3-D bioprinting. For example, as seen in the picture below, the group of high-schoolers got a sneak peek of a prosthetic foot being developed in BME Professor Helen Huang’s Neuromuscular Rehabilitation Engineering Lab. This prosthetic technology responds to neural impulses the way human limbs do, giving wearers more power when they’re moving around.
The goal is for the event to become a larger engineering expo, encompassing more than just biomechanics. To read the full article, visit NCSU news here.
