Elaine Wodzin Young Achiever Award
Francisco J. Lopez-Valdes, 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.
Francisco J. Lopez-Valdes is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at ICAI (School of Engineering) and Associate Researcher at the Institute for Research in Technology (IIT), both at Comillas Pontifical University. He is the coordinator of the Master Program on Mobility and Safety and of the Biomechanics Group within the Biomedical Division of IIT. Francisco received his PhD from the University of Virginia (USA) in 2013, with a dissertation focusing on pediatric biomechanics and under the guidance of Dr. Richard Kent (AAAM fellow). In 2012, he was awarded with a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship to return to Spain and lead the establishment of the first crash test laboratory with capabilities for Post Mortem Human Surrogate testing in the country. Francisco is currently a member of the Board of Directors of AAAM and has served in several other committees (Membership, Scientific Program, AIS Certification Board) since he joined the organization as a student in 2007. He is also a council member of the International Research Council on Biomechanics of Injury (IRCOBI) since 2104. Francisco is a member of the Editorial Board of the journals Injury Prevention, Injury Epidemiology and Journal of Healthcare Engineering. Fran is truly honored to receive the Elaine Wodzin Young Achiever Award and he is specially thankful to AAAM for providing him with the opportunity of meeting some of the pioneers of the Injury Prevention field that are a true inspiration for all injury prevention professionals.
AJ Mirkin Service Award
Matthew R. Maltese, PhD
The AJ Mirkin Service Award is given to an AAAM member who had made continuous service contributions through committee, faculty and project involvement.
Dr. Maltese began his career in crashworthiness and biomechanics research in 1994 at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), where contributed research findings to regulations including FMVSS 208, 213 and 214, as well as technical oversight and experimental design of large-scale crash and sled testing programs. In 2005, Dr. Maltese left NHTSA to join the research staff at the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), joining a vibrant research group there focused on child passenger safety and continuing his research on biomechanics and occupant protection; eventually he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. Also in 2005, Dr. Maltese began a new research focus in pediatric medical device development while continuing his research in automotive safety, harnessing the synergies between these two fields. In 2013, he founded the Philadelphia (now Pennsylvania) Pediatric Medical Device Consortium, a Food and Drug Administration-funded endeavor to spawn development of pediatric medical devices. In 2018, he was appointed Chief Innovation Officer of X-Biomedical, Inc. – a CHOP spinout commercializing holographic stereoscopic surgical microscopy technology he co-invented. Dr. Maltese lectures regularly worldwide on medical devices and injury biomechanics and teaches brain injury biomechanics and medical device development to undergraduates at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania, respectively. He is an Associate Editor of the journal Traffic Injury Prevention, and a Board Member and Scientific Program Committee Chair of the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine. He has authored 100+ publications and 2 book chapters, and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and a doctorate in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He cherishes every moment with his wife Heather, and is taught and re-taught invaluable life lessons by her and their children.
Donald F. Huelke Lifetime Membership Award
Richard J. Frampton, 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.
Richard Frampton is Senior Lecturer in Vehicle Safety at both the Design and Engineering Schools of Loughborough University, and a Visiting Professor at the Transportation Research Institute of Hasselt University. Prior to this, he served for several years with Ford Environmental and Safety Engineering, developing global safety information for new vehicle program teams. Dr. Frampton is a Fellow of AAAM and has contributed papers to the annual conference since 1993. Over the years, he has served on a wide range of AAAM committees, some for multiple terms, and helped organise annual conference symposia. In leadership roles, he has served on the Board of Directors and as chair of the Scientific Programme and Membership and Credentials committees. He has also served the Nominations and Awards, International Injury Scaling and Abbreviated Injury Scale Business committees. Richard has been a frequent contributor of European news to INROADS and a regular member of the Student Mentoring panel. He currently contributes to the Scientific Programme, Education and Fellow Review committees, and is a member of the Special Interest Group for Road Safety in Low and Middle Income Countries. He was given the A. J. Mirkin Service Award in 2009. Richard’s research focuses on the design of passive and active safety engineering, driven by evidence-based research. He has published widely on the development of vehicle safety technology and safety regulations, and managed major research grants from European and US motor manufacturers, the UK Government and European Union. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Birmingham University, working with Murray Mackay, one of AAAM’s past presidents. Over the past 30 years, Richard has continually championed Traffic Safety as a subject worthy of academic endeavour. To this end, he developed the first UK Master’s degree programme in Road and Traffic Safety and continues to mentor and encourage graduate student research in the field.
Award of Merit
James C. Fell, MS
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.
James C. Fell is currently a Principal Research Scientist with the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago in the Bethesda, Maryland office. From 2001 to 2015 he was a Senior Research Scientist at the Pacific Institute for Research & Evaluation (PIRE) in Calverton, Maryland. Before that, Mr. Fell worked at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) from 1969 to 1999 and has over 50 years of traffic safety and alcohol policy research experience. While at NORC, Mr. Fell has completed a survey of highway safety issues for the New Mexico Highway Safety Office, an evaluation of a special DUI enforcement program for the Maryland Highway Safety Office, a comprehensive analysis of DUI in crashes, roadside surveys and DUI arrests in Miami-Dade County for the Miami Foundation and a survey of the public support for underutilized strategies that reduce traffic fatalities for the National Safety Council (NSC). For the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) he recently evaluated all alcohol ignition interlock laws in the United States for their effectiveness and currently is studying the enforcement of minimum marijuana use age 21 laws in California. He has completed research on the effectiveness of graduated driver licensing laws under a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHHD), on enforcement intensity measures and impaired driving on the roads, the effectiveness of underage alcohol policies, and the potential effectiveness of lowering the BAC limit from .08 to .05 BAC for driving sponsored by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and studies on the effectiveness of responsible beverage service training and enforcement, alcohol ignition interlock laws, high visibility enforcement and alcohol monitoring devices on impaired driving offenders for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). He has authored or coauthored over 170 publications in book chapters, scientific journals and conference proceedings. He has both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Human Factors Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is a long-time member of the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM)(since 1969), including as past-president (1988), Board of Directors (1974-76; 1982-84; 2009-2011), Scientific Program Chairman (1976), Membership Chairman (1981), Treasurer (1985-86); Fellow (1994); three-time Best Scientific Paper award winner (1979, 1983 and 2010) and recipient in 2016 of the Donald F. Huelke Lifetime Membership Award. Mr. Fell is currently President-Elect and the 2013 recipient of the Widmark Award from the International Council on Alcohol, Drugs, and Traffic Safety (ICADTS), and a member of the Research Society on Alcoholism (RSA), the Society for Prevention Research (SPR) and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES). In 2015, Mr. Fell received the James J. Howard Highway Safety Trailblazer Award from the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) for sustained outstanding leadership in endeavors that significantly improve highway safety and the Kevin Quinlan Advocacy Award from the Maryland Highway Safety Office.