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Internship Program Spotlight: UCLA Sports Medicine Orthopaedic Research Center

6/20/2014

Intern: Katie Moses ‘15

Mentors: Dr. David McAllister, Director UCLA Sports Medicine Program & Team Physician for the UCLA Bruins; Dr. Keith Markolf, Ph.D. Professor at David Geffen School of Medicine; Dan Boguszewski, Ph.D.

Katie Moses is spending her summer at the UCLA Orthopaedic Surgery Biomechanics Lab. The lab specializes in research on athletic knee injuries, most notably on the repair of ACL tears, and focuses on researching just how ACL injuries happen.

The team is also focused on determining the best repair methods for both short and long term fixes. Katie’s primary responsibilities include learning how to run experiments related to force and motion on a simulator robot as well as dissecting human joints in order to understand the physical anatomy of the ACL injury and appropriate repair.

In this photo, Katie is dissecting a human ACL allograft. This is her first in-depth dissection experience and she noted that dissecting the tendon definitely involved a lot of detailed work to understand the joint. Katie used a whipstitch to prep the tendon as an ACL graft to use in one of the lab's cadaver knee experiments. The most compelling piece of the dissection for Katie was being able to see all of the working parts of the joint and muscle realizing how important it is for all of us as humans constantly in motion (walking, jogging) that all pieces work together.

Katie looks forward to 4 more weeks of research in the lab and hopes to use this experience as further guidance towards her interests in engineering and robotics as she moves towards college in the coming year.

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