Brooke Slavens, who has collaborated for several years with students and faculty in UWM’s College of Engineering & Applied Science, has joined the college as an associate professor, mechanical and biomedical engineering. She had been an associate professor in UWM’s College of Health Sciences since 2010.
Slavens researches the dynamics of human movement, musculoskeletal modeling, MRI and ultrasound musculoskeletal imaging, rehabilitation engineering, and orthopaedic biomechanics.
She is currently investigating the prevention of secondary medical conditions of the shoulder in manual wheelchair users with spinal cord injury across the lifespan. She is also leading a collaborative team with the Genetics Center at Children’s Wisconsin and Marquette University’s Orthopaedic and Rehabilitation Engineering Center to characterize the features of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a rare disease that renders children susceptible to constant and lifelong joint pain and fatigue.
Slavens’s work is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), and the VA Rehabilitation Research & Development Service (RR&D).
At the College of Engineering & Applied Science, she is joined by three research staff: Alyssa Schnorenberg, research scientist; Anthony Nguyen, research technician; and Jeremiah Johnson, research engineer.