Eleanor Anderson-Zych received the Computational Acoustics Early Career Presenter Award at the 6th joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Japanese Society for Acoustics for presenting Synergistic effects of material parameters and pressure wave characteristics on pulsed high-powered microwave induced cavitation injury Eleanor is part of the Johnsen Group at the University of …
Is it possible that the training of elite soldiers can cause brain injuries that accumulate over time? The following article brings attention to this important question. A Green Beret Went on a Shooting Rampage. Is the Army at Fault? by Dave Philipps January 12, 2026
Dr. Ross D. Zafonte testified to congress in February of 2024 about treatment of blast TBI in special operators. Here’s an interview from March of 2025 where he discusses a variety of TBI topics with Chris Irwin, a retired SEAL and the Navy Seal Foundation’s Communications Director. The discussion of blast TBI starts at 34:30 …
Civilian firearms fired at indoor ranges may expose a shooter’s brain to damaging blast waves. This New York Times article by Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Dave Philipps and Jeremy White shows blast overpressures recorded at an indoor range and raises questions about their safety. Target Shooting Could Be Causing Brain Injuries.We Measured the Danger. By Thomas Gibbons-Neff, …
Researchers from Team Wendy attended PASS 2025 in Bruges, Belgium to present their work on testing military helmets under rotation. >> See coverage in Police Magazine Paper Title: A Novel Helmet Testing Apparatus for Assessing Rotational Head Kinematics and Its Applications in Military Helmet Design Authors: Shuting Kou, Jaden Romero, Aravind Sundaramurthy, Ryan Doris, Ron …
doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r2028 The FDA’s February 2021 authorisation of the Q-Collar was a huge boost to company growth. A careful reading of regulatory documents, however, reveals that FDA scientists were well aware that the evidence base hadn’t demonstrated clinical effectiveness—but they approved it anyway.
Team Wendy has partnered with PANTHER from the start. Check out this video to learn the basics of ballistic helmet testing.
See news coverage here: New York Times: CTE Looms Over Friday Night Lights New York Times: Gunman Who Attacked Midtown Office Building Had C.T.E. Wall Street Journal: New York City Office Shooter Had CTE, Medical Examiner Finds
1st Place Carissa Roper 2nd Place Sinan Candan 3rd Place Sumit Kumar Honorable Mention: Jeneel Kachhadiya & Jamie Sergay
More than 90 researchers gathered for the 2025 PANTHER Workshop held in Madison, WI last week. Thank you to all who invested in making our time together vibrant and fruitful. The team approach is truly at the core of PANTHER’s success.
Full article from the Brown Daily Herald can be found here. Brown University’s campus newspaper featured an article describing the brain injury research conducted by Profs. Haneesh Kesari, Diane Hoffman-Kim and David Henann.
PANTHER researchers shared their work at the Military Health System Research Symposium in Kissimmee, Florida.
Congress of the International Society of Biomechanics in Stockholm Sweden July 27 – 31, PANTHER researchers from Eastern Carolina University will present their latest work on the influence of repetitive loading on neural impairment and cognitive function within fast boat operators and crew. The importance of this issue was reported in the NYTimes in November …
Congratulations Theva for your award from the Society for Experimental Mechanics in recognition of your outstanding mid-career contributions to experimental mechanics. UW-Madison Press Release:
Researchers from PANTHER recently visited Coast Guard Stations across the southeast to investigate the influence of repetitive loading on neural impairment and cognitive function within fast boat operators and crew. In addition, the team would like to welcome Dr. Thomas Demirjian and postdoc and Steven Philpott, research associate to the team!
Save the date: Sept 15-16, Madison, WI
Move over Glasgow Coma Score! A new framework for the characterization of acute TBI has been proposed for the acute stage of injury FOUR PILLARS Of particular interest: Citation: A new characterisation of acute traumatic brain injury: the NIH-NINDS TBI Classification and Nomenclature InitiativeManley, Geoffrey TAdams, Rachel Syako et al.The Lancet Neurology, Volume 24, Issue …
Jeneel was awarded the the 2nd best student paper at the IEEE Inertial Conference in Germany, May 4-7 2025. The award is for the paper recently published in IEEE Sensors Letters Congratulations! J. Kachhadiya et al., “Lightweight Wearable Headband With Flexible Hybrid Electronics for Head-Kinematic Monitoring and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Risk Detection,” in IEEE …
International Forum on Blast Injury Countermeasures Panther’s Prof. Carlsen will attend to present her novel computational modeling framework that integrates numerical modeling approaches with experimentally measured neuronal injury data to predict the risk of neuronal injury following repetitive blast exposure. The framework focuses on cavitation-induced injury, i.e. damage caused by the formation of cavities due …
Researchers from PANTHER and sister program TIGER were privileged to be included in Technology Operational Experimentation Exercise (TOEE) 2025 During the exercise, Marines had a chance to to interact with new technology in a realistic environment. PANTHER had a rare opportunity to solicit feedback directly from the warfighters on a helmet with an embedded sensor …
Dr. Sarah Bentil at Iowa State University is hosting a 2-day course taught by Dave Ritzel titled “Basics of Blast Physics and Simulation for Injury Studies”. Complete the survey by March 23rd (Sunday). Hope to see you there!
Top-Gun Navy Pilots Fly at the Extremes. Their Brains May Sufferarticle by Dave Philipps on New York Times website Panther researcher Diane Hoffman-Kim at Brown University in Providence, RI has been looking at how sustained compression may lead to brain injury
PANTHER extends thanks to Dr. Perl for giving an outstanding PANTHER talk in December 2024 on Human Studies of Military TBI and Other Warfighter Brain Health Concerns Daniel P Perl, MDProfessor of Pathology, Uniformed Services UniversityDirector, DoD/USU Brain Tissue Repository Dr. Perl is an expert on blast-TBI pathology found in the brains of service members. …
Eleanor Anderson-Zych received the Outstanding Paper by an Early Career Presenter Award from the ASA Technical Committee on Computational Acoustics for presenting “A computational investigation of cavitation-induced traumatic brain injury as a result of high-powered microwave exposure”. Eleanor is part of the Johnsen Group at the University of Michigan. Congratulations!
Known as the (D-BOP RIG), this is a great reference created with data collected by the USUHS CONQUER program. Note: PANTHER did not contribute to the generation of this guide D-BOP RIG Specifies recommended stand-off distances for those (1) involved in training (e.g., instructors, range safety officers) and (2) involved in operations of the weapon …
In 2023 Dr. Ann McKee gave a talk at Viterbo University in Wisconsin. The Inconvenient Truth about CTE If you are a mild-TBI researcher and you’re asked “what do you do” at family gatherings, this is could be a good video to share – it includes lots of technical detail but it is presented in …
PANTHER 8 has been funded by ONR. The focus of all the projects in this group is Directed Energy – Traumatic Brain Injury. Our goals is to define the connection between pulsed microwave exposure and injury to define biophysical safety limits for future work. This work will be foundational for several areas including clinical diagnosis …
The following article by Dave Philipps of the New York Times shows tragic deterioration in the lives of the Navy’s Special Boat Teams after their bodies and brains are slammed over waves at high speeds. Chronic Brain Trauma Is Extensive in Navy’s Elite Speedboat Crews The pounding that sailors’ brains take from years of high-speed …
CARES Lab at Iowa State University Coordinator: Dr. Sarah A. Bentil Advanced Blast Simulator (ABS) Commissioned at Iowa State University’s CARES Lab On May 23, 2024, commissioning shots were performed on the newly fabricated advanced blast simulator (ABS) at the CARES Lab, which is directed by Dr. Sarah A. Bentil at Iowa State University. “CARES” …
PANTHER researchers presented 5 posters and gave 1 talk at the 2024 Military Health System Research Symposium
This article highlights the work of Brown University Profs Diane Hoffman-Kim and Haneesh Kesari – a fruitful PANTHER collaboration. Under pressure: mini-brains get a surprising shake-up
The PANTHER team gathered in Madison, WI in September for the annual workshop We enjoyed warm weather as we ate lunch outside on the terrace at the Memorial Union The workshop featured two poster sessions to showcase PANTHER research
Wisconsin researchers weigh in on concussion prevention innovations in sports Wisconsin Public Radio’s Wisconsin Today interviewed PANTHER’s Theva regarding concussion in contact sport and the new foam materials his lab develops to prevent brain injuries. 1: The audio: Wisconsin researchers on concussion prevention: https://www.wpr.org/shows/wisconsin-today-2/milwaukee-police-chief-guardian-caps-manitowoc-church-organ-restored 2. The text: Wisconsin researchers weigh in on concussion prevention innovations …
Congratulations! First place – Rafael D. González-Cruz Second Place – Carissa Roper Third Place – Kevin Eckstein
Revolutionary blood test identifies patients with brain injuries The blood test looks for GFAP and UCH-L1 PANTHER was not involved with any part of this product’s development
The Andrews’ Lab had the opportunity to test their newly designed pressure sensors within Sarah Bentil’s shock tube at Iowa State University. Their group is investigating wearable sensing systems that can transduce blast overpressure using both capacitive and triboelectric techniques. They are excited to share their findings soon!
A new collaborative study was recently published in the the Journal of Applied Polymer Science to show how factors that affect the viscoelastic fatigue response of flexible polymeric foams. Citation: Foster, Moira M., Morrison, Daniel C., Landauer, Alexander K., Herynk, Mark D., and Lamberson, Leslie E. Assessment of frequency and amplitude dependence on the cyclic degradation …
Science published an article outlining some possible connections between human blast-brain injuries and the theories of what may cause mass strandings of marine mammals. Title: A big bang theory of big brain trauma by Dr. Terrie M Williams
On July 23, 2024 the OFFICE OF THE UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE released its Report on Incidence of Military Suicides by Military Job Code With the aim of providing data and comparisons on suicides across military occupations. Link to NYTimes articleJournalist Dave Philipps reports: The report shows a correlation between occupational exposure to blast and …
Congratulations to Benjamin Grossman-Ponemon, PhD who recently joined the faculty of the Physics department at John Carroll University in Cleveland, OH. Ben was a postdoc in Prof. Haneesh Kesari’s group at Brown University and for PANTHER, worked on a model to simulate motion of the whole body.
A game-changing solution to a knotty problem in computational engineering
An expert panel recently voted NOT to endorse the use of MDMA for the treatment of PTSD. Much of the news coverage surrounding this decision was centered on MDMA’s classification as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act. This should not overshadow the motivation for assessing MDMA and other psychoactive compounds for PTSD …
The University of Wisconsin College of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering has posted an interview with PANTHER founder Prof. Christian Franck. In this interview, Franck discusses how blasts damage brain tissue, describes efforts to monitor and protect military service members, and explains the delay that can happen between a traumatic brain injury and when symptoms …
Alex McGhee, PhD has joined the faculty at the University of Arizona in the College of Engineering, Biomedical Engineering Congratulations! https://bme.engineering.arizona.edu/news-events/bme-seminar-alexandar-mcghee https://bme.engineering.arizona.edu/faculty-staff/faculty/alexander-mcghee
NYT Journalist David Philipps has a new article published 5/2/24: Signs of Brain Injury in Mortar Soldiers: ‘Guys Are Getting Destroyed’ A slow-motion video provided by Sgt. Michael Devaul shows the training in 2021 that left him so dazed that he drove home to the wrong house.
At Team Wendy facilities in Ohio, the PANTHER team conducted testing of newly designed flexible hybrid electronic headbands consisting of multiple distributed accelerometers. The headband was tested using a novel Hybrid-III torso drop test method we’ve taken to calling “DREW” (Dummy for Rotational Evaluation of Wearables). The multiple accelerometers allow for compatibility with PANTHER developed …
In 2021, Prof. Diane Hoffman-Kim’s research group at Brown University was awarded a DURIP to purchase a Nikon Confocal Microscope for imaging cortical spheroids. Neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, and apoptotic and necrotic cell death are some of the biological responses that occurs in the minutes to days after the initial injury from TBI. The details about …
The recent JAMA article Neurological Illness and National Security: Lessons to Be Learned by David Relman, MD (citations below) gives a perspective on the anomalous health incidents (AHIs) that resonates with PANTHER’s approach to TBI research. AHI’s have been in the news again in the wake of a JAMA article by Chan et. al that …
Team Wendy’s new test rig utilizes the instrumented Hybrid III 50th Male dummy to replicate realistic and biofidelic impact kinematics. The test rig can simulate head-to-ground impacts, incorporating head rotational motion induced by whiplash, to evaluate helmet performance. The test rig is capable of assessing linear and rotational motion properties and conducting tests at various …
PANTHER research aims to understand the connection between blast exposure and biophysical changes in the brain. This is the groundwork needed for preventing injury. Full article by Dave Philipps of the New York Times Evidence of blast exposure Evidence of physical damage in the brain