From a background in biomechanical engineering, the focus of my research is on how the nervous system responds to mechanical loading – both those loads which cause injury and those which are part of normal function. Our approach spans the range from the whole body (e.g crash testing) through individual tissues, and down to a molecular scale – integrating the data to gain an understanding of the detailed mechanisms of nervous system injury and mechanically influenced physiological functions.

I use novel imaging techniques such as tagged MRI and MR elastography to study a diverse range of in vivo mechanical functions, including obstructive sleep apnoea,muscle injury, biomechanical properties of tissues during growth and development, neural tissue mechanics, syringomyelia and hydrocephalus.