2018 Annual Conference Highlights

2017 Best Scientific Paper Award
Gretchen Baker

The Best Scientific Paper selection is based on evaluations and ratings of presentations from previous year’s conference and ultimately decided by the Scientific Program Committee. 

Gretchen Baker obtained her BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kansas. She was then selected as a Whitaker International Fellow and spent a year at Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Sweden where she conducted research with the Child Safety group in the Department of Applied Mechanics. She is currently a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow pursuing her PhD in Biomedical Engineering at The Ohio State University. Gretchen conducts research related to pediatric injury biomechanics and child restraint systems in the Injury Biomechanics Research Center and is also a certified Child Passenger Safety Technician.

Elaine Wodzin Young Achiever Award
F. Scott Gayzik, PhD

Named for Elaine Wodzin, a long-serving executive director of AAAM, who had the innate ability to recognize the future of the organization through the efforts of young professionals.  The award is given to a younger (<45 years) member of AAAM for a singular specific achievement in automotive medicine or other contributions to the field of traffic injury control.  The achievement could be (but not limited to) the publication of a seminal research work, practical implementation of an injury control concept, or promotion of an element of public injury control policy.

F. Scott Gayzik, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and faculty in the Virginia Tech – Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences. Scott’s research focuses on injury biomechanics with an emphasis on computational biomechanics. He has a particular interest in human body finite element modeling, model validation, and injury metric development.

Scott currently leads the Full Body Models Center of Expertise of the Global Human Body Models Consortium, which is a world-wide effort to advance the field of human modeling for crash injury prediction and prevention. He also serves his home department as the clinical rotation coordinator for incoming first year PhD students.

Scott joined AAAM as a student in 2006. He currently serves on the Scientific Program Committee and chairs the Student Program Subcommittee. He is truly honored to join the ranks of the past Young Achiever Awardees and looks forward to working closely with his friends and colleagues in AAAM to advance the field of road traffic safety.

AJ Mirkin Service Award
Janet P. Price, RN, MSA, CAISS

The AJ Mirkin Service Award is given to an AAAM member who had made continuous service contributions through committee, faculty and project involvement.

Jan Price is a retired trauma program manager and nurse educator.   She received a BSN from the University of Rochester and a Master’s Degree in Health Services Administration from Central Michigan University. She served in the US Navy Nurse Corps for seven years during the Vietnam Conflict. She taught nursing at Grant Hospital School of Nursing in Columbus, Ohio and then helped develop the Level I trauma program and the LifeFlight helicopter program at Grant. In 1997 she moved to Waco, Texas to establish a Level II trauma program at Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center. She has published articles and presented many papers on a wide variety of trauma topics.

Since 1998 she has taught AAAM’s Injury Scaling courses and in 2001 became AAAM’s first Technical Coordinator for Injury Scaling until retiring in 2015. She has managed and taught Injury Scaling courses in North America, Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Spain, Viet Nam, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, India, and Korea. She oversaw development of both the online version of the Injury Scaling Course and the certification program for Abbreviated Injury Scale Specialists (CAISS).

She enjoys gardening, reading and riding her Missouri Fox Trotter, Diamond Rio, on trails around central Texas.  She has also ridden horses on treks in Wales, Spain and most recently in Sardinia. She is married to a retired Army officer and helicopter pilot, Murray, and they have 3 children and 5 grandchildren.

Donald F. Huelke Lifetime Membership Award
Frank A. Pintar, PhD

This award is to recognize, honor, and acknowledge an individual who has made outstanding contributions and provided repeated volunteer services to the AAAM organization by maintaining membership for over 15 years, having served on committees or as an officer of the Board, organized seminars (or served as faculty) or symposia, recruited ten or more new members of AAAM, contributed to the endowment fund, and received another AAAM award.

Dr. Pintar is a Professor in the joint department of Biomedical Engineering at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Marquette University. He is the Director of the Neuroscience and Biomechanics Research Laboratories at the VA Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Neurosurgery.

As a member of AAAM, he has contributed papers to the annual conference since 1995 and was co-author on multiple best scientific papers. Dr. Pintar has served on the Board of Directors for multiple terms and on the Executive Committee as Secretary, Treasurer, and President. He served on the Fellows Committee, the Nominating Committee and was involved in multiple strategic planning initiatives. He presently serves on the AIS Committee. He has helped recruit multiple new members including six from his own institution. Dr. Pintar has also served as an instructor in AAAM Biomechanics courses and has given invited lectures at specialty conferences. He was given the AAAM Award of Merit in 2012.

His research focuses on adult and pediatric trauma biomechanics, specifically head and spine trauma. Dr. Pintar has contributed more than 600 research publications with over 300 peer-reviewed journal articles. He has been awarded research grants from the VA, NIH, CDC, FAA, DoD, and NHTSA. He is currently the principal investigator of the CIREN Engineering Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Over the years, Dr. Pintar has served as a research mentor to over 30 graduate students, post-docs, residents, fellows and junior faculty in the medical school and engineering school. At the Neuroscience Labs, there is an emphasis on finding solutions to clinically relevant problems by fostering collaboration with neurosurgeons, orthopaedic surgeons, neuroradiologists, emergency medicine and physical medicine/rehab specialists and pathologists.

Award of Merit
H. Clay Gabler, PhD

Given to an outstanding individual who has made significant scientific contributions to an aspect of automotive medicine over many years or for a single outstanding contribution.

H. Clay Gabler is the Samuel Herrick Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Virginia Tech. Dr. Gabler serves as the Chair for Graduate Studies for the Virginia Tech Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics, and is an Associate Director of the Center of Injury Biomechanics. Prior to Virginia Tech, he served as a research program manager at the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Dr. Gabler has published a book and over 220 technical articles on subjects including automated vehicle safety, active safety, vehicle crashworthiness, injury biomechanics, event data recorders, roadside safety, crash epidemiology, and crash modeling. He received his PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University.

Dr. Gabler is a Fellow of AAAM and has previously served on the AAAM Board of Directors and as the chair of the AAAM Scientific Program Committee. He is a Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers, a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, Associate Editor for Traffic Injury Prevention and the SAE International Journal of Transportation Safety, a recipient of the SAE Lloyd L. Withrow Distinguished Speaker Award, the SAE Ralph H. Isbrandt Award, the SAE Ralph R. Teetor Award, a Dwight D. Eisenhower Faculty Fellowship, Princeton’s Luigi Crocco Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

2018 Fellow
Jennifer Oxley, PhD

The status of AAAM Fellow has been established to recognize significant and sustained contributions of individual members and thereby to promote the academic, scientific and professional credibility of traffic crash injury prevention and control and impact biomechanics. The AAAM admits to Fellowship those members whose professional and allied activities are devoted to one or more fields related to automotive medicine, including medicine, trauma surgery, biomechanics, engineering, nursing, public health, education, human behavior, law, public policy and road safety.  To be considered for Fellow status, an applicant must be an AAAM member for at least five years, and must show evidence of continuing interest in the purpose and aims of the Association.

Jennie Oxley is a Senior Research Fellow, Deputy Director Curtin-Monash Accident Research Centre and Associate Director, Regional Engagement at the Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC).

Jennie holds a PhD in Psychology and has expertise as an academic in applied health sciences. Her main research interests are in injury prevention and trauma management and applying human factors psychology to determine the contributing factors to crash and injury risk. She also has a keen research interest in injury and health outcomes following involvement in traffic crashes, assessment of road user performance, as well as evaluations of educational programs and technology interventions.

During her time with MUARC, Jennie has made a significant contribution to vulnerable road user safety, and is responsible for managing major projects in the areas of assessment of risk of learner and novice drivers, elderly road users, child pedestrians and cyclists, human factors and safety issues relevant to ITS technologies, and development of innovative measures to improve safe mobility.