UD’s Killian to participate in movement and rehabilitation sciences career development program
Megan Killian, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Delaware, has been selected as a scholar for the Interdisciplinary Rehabilitation Engineering Career Development Program (IREK12) in Movement and Rehabilitation Sciences, which operates out of Northwestern University.
Killian’s research will focus on rotator cuff tears, a common orthopedic problem that leads to shoulder pain, dysfunction and degeneration.
“Surgical repair is the primary treatment for functional reattachment of torn cuff tendons to bone, accounting for more than 75,000 orthopedic operations each year in the United States,” she says.
“Rotator cuff degeneration, which elevates the risk of repair-site failure, often results from impaired regeneration of the fibrocartilage and failed healing of the repaired attachment. One approach to improve regeneration and healing is to leverage insight from how the native cuff naturally develops.”