Protecting Brains and Furthering Biomechanics

Faculty Member, Professor, Mentor, and Researcher

Brittany Coats is a researcher and professor in the mechanical engineering department at the University of Utah. She is the first female tenured full-professor in the mechanical engineering department here at the U, but that is only the beginning of the story of her impressive career.

Her research focuses on the development of computational models to predict skull fracture patterns, which can be unintuitive and far too complex to understand post-accident. First, an understanding of cranial protective structure must be understood, and Dr. Coats has led extensive research on the biological tissue that helps secure and cushion the outer edges of our brains. Using these properties and additional discoveries about the heterogeneous (non-uniform) nature of the structures protecting our brain, computational models could be developed. In collaboration with Ashley Spear, cutting edge computational models were designed and are used to predict crack propagation, fracture patterns in cranial bone, and through reverse-engineering, the sources of head impact.

Coats work has been used to predict the sources of impact in infants skulls, which are very different from the rigid skulls found in adults or adolescents. Dr. Coats' work on traumatic brain injury (TBI) is dramatically changing the game in terms of identifying the source of skull fractures/brain injuries and predicting the effects of TBI based on the location of the injury. She has found that fracture can occur in cases previously thought impossible. While it is impossible to intentionally test impact on children heads, there is never a shortage of athletic individuals, such as football players, who find it worthwhile to improve the gear that prevents concussions. These models help researchers and doctors make informed diagnoses on the causes of TBI and predict the effects of the injury. These models not only help explain and protect infants but allows designers to build protective gear that will shape the way we think in the future.

Oral History

Three interviews of Dr. Brittany Coats were held on October 23rd, October 30th, and November 6th of 2024. The full transcript can be found here (link) and the audio can be found here (link).

References

  1. Ruiz-Maldonado, T, Alsanea Y, and Coats B. Age-related skull fracture patterns in infants after low height falls.. Pediatrics Research. (2023)  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-022-02345-9

  2. Yan J, He J, Spear A and Coats B. The effect of impact angle and fall height on skull fracture patterns in infants. Journal of Biomechanical Engineering. 143(7): 071004 (2021)

  3. He J, Yan J, Margulies S, Coats B and Spear A. An adaptive-remeshing framework to predict impact-induced skull fracture in infants. Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology. 19:1595-1605 (2020)

  4. Benko N, Luke E, Alsanea Y and Coats B. Mechanical characterization of the human pia-arachnoid complex. Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials. 120:104579 (2021)

  5. Benko N, Luke E, Alsanea Y, and Coats B. Spatial distribution of human arachnoid trabeculae. Journal of Anatomy. 237:275-284. (2020)

  6. Scott GG and Coats B. Microstructural characterization of the pia-arachnoid complex using optical coherence tomography. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging. Jul; 34(7):1452-1459 (2015)

*Page written, formatted, and designed by Emma Ferran and Noah Garcia. The interview audio and transcripts were written by and include Emma Ferran, Amy Rhees, Andrew Hearther, and Noah Garcia (as well as Dr. Brittany Coats).

 

Later edited by Pamalatera C. Fenn

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