Glen Niebur
Professor, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Director, Bioengineering Graduate Program
Contact
Phone
574-631-3327
Office
147 Multidisciplinary Engineering Research Building
Areas of Interest
Professor Niebur’s research is focused on orthopedics, including bone quality; damage mechanics of trabecular bone; mechanobiology of bone; hard and soft tissue constitutive modeling; computational mechanics of tissues; and genetic factors affecting bone quality.
He investigates the interactions between microdamage formation in bone and the changes in bone porosity and structure that accompany osteoporosis. Osteoporosis results in changes at multiple levels of the hierarchical structure of bone, and these can either compensate for or enhance fracture risk. Medical imaging methods, especially computed tomography (CT) are used to image and quantify bone structures in bone samples and in live animals.
Another project is using medical imaging to longitudinally monitor and understand fracture healing. He also works in the area of bone marrow mechanics, affects of aging and disease on bone marrow morphology, and interactions between bone and bone marrow.
Websites
Education
Ph.D, University of California at Berkeley, 2000
M.S.M.E., University of Minnesota, 1995
B.M.E., University of Minnesota, 1986