Engineering speakers win prizes at Podium Institute conference

In collaboration with Wiley, the Podium Institute Annual Conference on Sports Medicine & Technology 2025 awarded prizes to three of the accepted speakers. The prizes were as follows:

• Best student presentation (must be a registered student at a higher education institution)
• Best young researcher presentation (within 10 years of PhD completion)
• Best newcomer presentation (first time presenting technology/medicine in a sports context)

Dr Chenying Liu received the best Young Researcher Presentation for her talk entitled 'A High-Fidelity Finite Element Framework for Head-Helmet Impact Simulation and Brain Injury Evaluation'. Her presentation addressed the challenge of helmet effectiveness in reducing traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). Certification standards rely on test that overlook key factors such as rotational accelerations, neck dynamics and individual variability. Real-world impacts are also shaped by complex environmental variables. Dr Liu, a Junior Research Fellow in the Healthcare Biorobotics Lab, developed a finite element model to simulate realistic head-helmet impacts, which allows variation in parameters such as impact angle, velocity, head size and neck stiffness.

C. Liu, Z. You, H. Xi, Y. Chen, J. Zhang, C. Coussios, and L. He, A High-Fidelity Finite Element Framework for Head-Helmet Impact Simulation and Brain Injury Evaluation. Annual Conference on Sports Medicine & Technology 2025, Oxford, United Kingdom (2025)

The Best Student Presentation Prize was awarded to DPhil student Konstantin Dzavaryan for:

K. Dzavaryan, A. Jérusalem and L. He. Digital twins for impact reconstruction and TBI in sports. Annual Conference on Sports Medicine & Technology 2025, Oxford, United Kingdom (2025).