Dr Mazdak Ghajari, Imperial College London

This research aims to improve brain health for athletes and people playing sports by developing accessible technologies to monitor brain exposure to mechanical loads that can cause injury. While participation in sports has substantial health benefits, the excessive mechanical loading of the head can lead to short and long-term consequences. Only by measuring these forces we can guide improvements in brain injury prevention and management.

This fellowship is sponsored by Sports and Wellbeing Analytics, a leading provider of instrumented mouthguards and sports collision data, and Cellbond Impact Solutions, a leading manufacturer and designer of biofidelic human surrogates. This project will use the large scale of data to understand how to guide improvements in sports governing bodies’ guidelines. This research will also define new standards for collecting biomechanical data and define thresholds for interpreting this data. We will use this data to develop new standards for designing better injury prevention systems, such as helmets.