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“I was so happy when I realized that mechanical engineering can be applied to your own body,” says Gao, originally from Fujian, in southern China. Gao’s research revolves around the shoulder joint, or glenoid. About 23,000 Americans receive total shoulder joint replacement surgery each year, compared with more than 700,000 who receive knee or hip replacements. “Shoulder research is where the knee was 30 years ago,” says Gao. From an engineer’s perspective, shoulders are more complicated than knees. “It has six degrees of freedom of motion,” explains Gao. “Besides rotations, it also has some translations.” In a project with the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, Gao is developing a model to show how stress is distributed in shoulder implants and the surrounding bone through a range of motions. Using a special table, residents at the hospital measure contact forces in artificial joints implanted in cadaver shoulders. “We use that as input for our models,” says Gao. “The purpose of this project is to determine how the geometry, anatomy, and design factors affect glenoid loosening in total shoulder replacement.” That information will help manufacturers design better shoulder implants and also provide insights for surgeons. “The doctors in the hospital are very excited about this project,” says Gao. “They know there are things during surgery they have to be careful about, but they don’t know why. They want us to find out.” Gao is also interested in skeletal muscles. She combines that with her interest in the shoulder by studying what happens to muscles after a rotator cuff tear. “MRI scans show that after tears there’s some muscle degeneration,” she says. “I want to investigate the mechanisms of the muscle degeneration and also how the force generation capacity of the rotator cuff muscles is affected.” In another collaboration with the Hospital for Special Surgery, she’s looking at how mechanical forces affect muscle regeneration after the rotator cuff has been repaired. The work could result in physical therapy recommendations like how soon, how much, and how often patients should exercise after surgery. People, and the chance to work with practicing surgeons are the main reasons Gao chose Cornell. “When I came here for an interview I found the people were so nice and friendly,” she says. “Also, here I have opportunities to work with the hospital. You can do something with very high clinical relevance, so you feel you are really helping people.” Gao figures she’ll be shouldering glenoid research for the rest of her career. “The doctors in the hospital say I can do that glenoid project for my whole life because there are so many things to explore and there are so many unknown issues there,” she says. |
