Project Grant 2331295

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded The Johns Hopkins University a 3-year, $274,297 Project Grant under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) to conduct collaborative research on the extreme mechanics of the human brain. The research aims to generate insights into how the living human brain responds to large and rapid loading, which is critical for developing models to predict traumatic brain injury and designing safer protective equipment. The project will combine high-rate mechanical testing, analytical and computational modeling, and machine learning to characterize the brain's mechanical behavior under extreme loading conditions. Specifically, the research will focus on developing multi-fidelity models that fuse ex vivo tissue responses with in vivo data to predict the linear viscoelastic and visco-hyperelastic properties of the living brain under a wide range of loading frequencies and deformations. The findings are expected to have broad impacts on national health and welfare, as well as advance the fields of tissue mechanics, traumatic brain injury, and machine learning.