The dates for the International Forum on Blast Injury Countermeasures 2026 have been announced Important dates: IFBIC 2026 will cover several topic areas, including blast injury epidemiology; blast injury mechanisms; clinical characteristics of blast; prevention, protection, and mitigation of blast injury; emerging combined blast effects and related injuries; and novel methods and technology for blast …
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!