With the help of National Science Foundation CAREER awards, two Mechanical Engineering professors hope to better understand infant joint disorders and automobile driving behavior. Associate Professor Dr. Victor Huayamave and Assistant Professor Dr. Subhradeep Roy are the recipients of two five-year NSF CAREER awards totaling more than $1,133,000. Huayamave’s research aims to improve the prevention and treatment of infant joint disorders like hip dysplasia. The research builds on extensive work Huayamave has done on the subject
— one of his objectives is to establish a causal link between untreated or mistreated dysplasia in infants and children and the eventual need for hip replacement in adulthood. The research funded by his award will use the hip joint as a test system to then move toward the study of other biomechanical pathologies, such as scoliosis, spina bifida and clubfoot, with the aim of establishing new approaches to better understand and treat those conditions. As part of his own research, Dr. Roy will use virtual reality technology to collect data and quantify and model driving behavior. The project draws inspiration from Roy’s prior work on studying traffic systems and will investigate driving maneuvers like lane changing, passing and stopping.
Roy hopes to shed light on the complexities of driving behavior in a facility with networked simulators. The simulators will collect data from multiple drivers while they drive in shared scenarios, allowing for the study of their interactions and the development of data-based traffic models that will aid in improving traffic safety.
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