https://headlab.org/news/atom.xml Lab updates, publications, and press coverage from HEAD Lab at Imperial College London. 2026-09-17T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab Astro https://headlab.org/news/2026-09-ircobi-munich/ 2026-09-17T00:00:00.000Z 2026-09-17T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

Nine papers from the lab at this year's IRCOBI at LMU Munich — Emily, Elena, Claire, Will, Lucas, Vahid and Xiancheng presenting on individualised brain strain, mandibular muscle forces, post-collision injury prediction, collapsible helmets, motorcycle facial impacts and more.

https://headlab.org/news/2026-09-mazdak-ghajari-professor/ 2026-09-03T00:00:00.000Z 2026-09-03T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

Nineteen years after arriving in the UK for his PhD, Mazdak has been promoted to Professor of Brain Biomechanics at Imperial College London.

https://headlab.org/news/2026-08-face-the-facts-paper/ 2026-08-13T00:00:00.000Z 2026-08-13T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

New study in Traffic Safety Research, led by Claire Baker, on where riders' heads are actually struck in crashes — and how often the face is involved.

https://headlab.org/news/2026-08-ansys-feature/ 2026-08-09T00:00:00.000Z 2026-08-09T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

Ansys highlighted the lab's computational work on how head impacts strain brain tissue, in a piece on the 69 million traumatic brain injuries a year.

https://headlab.org/news/2026-08-fea-video-series/ 2026-07-21T00:00:00.000Z 2026-07-21T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

Fifteen videos covering the theory and practice of FEA — truss, beam and solid elements, buckling, vibration, non-linear analysis — from the DE2 module, free to all.

https://headlab.org/news/2026-07-wcb-vancouver/ 2026-07-15T00:00:00.000Z 2026-07-15T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

Seven talks from the lab across the congress — Mazdak on field measurements of injury, Emily on computational modelling and concussion, Elena on biomechanics in practice, Claire on concussion and brain injury, Lucas on motor-vehicle injury and Vahid on brain injury.

https://headlab.org/news/2026-07-presidents-award/ 2026-07-14T00:00:00.000Z 2026-07-14T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

Recognised for biomechanics research that has challenged established assumptions, influenced safety standards and policy, and translated into practical tools for industry and the public.

https://headlab.org/news/2026-06-spine-stiffness-paper/ 2026-06-18T00:00:00.000Z 2026-06-18T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

Compressive and flexion stiffnesses of all discs of the human spine under high-rate loading, from lab tests and inverse modelling — for more biofidelic whole-spine models.

https://headlab.org/news/2026-06-hiper-150k/ 2026-06-09T00:00:00.000Z 2026-06-09T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

Since launching in September 2024 the ratings have been accessed over 150,000 times worldwide. The lab is now asking manufacturers, retailers and cyclists which rating format they would trust.

https://headlab.org/news/2026-05-childrens-helmet-standards/ 2026-04-21T00:00:00.000Z 2026-04-21T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

Same drop height, same anvils, same pass threshold — with no systematic evidence that they reflect how children actually get hurt. Road Safety Trust-funded work to change that.

https://headlab.org/news/2026-03-women-at-imperial/ 2026-03-11T00:00:00.000Z 2026-03-11T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

Highlighting Claire's work on automated triage of road traffic collisions from accessible sensor kinematics.

https://headlab.org/news/2026-03-industrial-helmets-paper/ 2026-03-05T00:00:00.000Z 2026-03-05T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

Published in Annals of Biomedical Engineering: hard hats are tested for falling objects, yet over 70% of brain injuries on industrial sites come from trips and falls. Six designs tested on the lab's rig.

https://headlab.org/news/2025-11-prince-michael-award/ 2025-11-27T00:00:00.000Z 2025-11-27T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

The HEAD Lab team received a Prince Michael International Road Safety Award in recognition of the HIPER helmet rating programme.

https://headlab.org/news/2025-10-abme-best-paper/ 2025-10-23T00:00:00.000Z 2025-10-23T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

ABME's editorial team recognised the paper behind the HIPER cycle-helmet rating as its research article of the year.

https://headlab.org/news/2025-10-mouthguard-ml-paper/ 2025-10-07T00:00:00.000Z 2025-10-07T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

Emily Chan's new paper: a small set of features from instrumented-mouthguard head kinematics is enough to estimate brain strain, simple enough to run inside existing systems.

https://headlab.org/news/2025-10-abme-helmets-feature/ 2025-10-05T00:00:00.000Z 2025-10-05T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

Why most helmet standards still focus on skull fracture — and what testing 30 of the UK's most popular bike helmets for brain-injury protection showed.

https://headlab.org/news/2025-09-hiper-first-year/ 2025-09-25T00:00:00.000Z 2025-09-25T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

The Road Safety Trust marked a year since the launch of the HIPER helmet rating it funded.

https://headlab.org/news/2025-09-ircobi-vilnius/ 2025-09-12T00:00:00.000Z 2025-09-12T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

Four short communications from the lab at IRCOBI 2025 — sex and brain anatomy effects on brain strain, biomechanical modelling of normal pressure hydrocephalus, reconstruction of 24 real-world motorcycle collisions, and motorcyclist facial impact prevalence.

https://headlab.org/news/2024-09-ircobi-stockholm/ 2024-09-11T00:00:00.000Z 2024-09-11T00:00:00.000Z HEAD Lab

Three short communications from the lab at IRCOBI 2024 — near real-time brain strain from XGBoost models, headforms for oblique helmet testing, and smart-device sensors for vulnerable road users.

https://headlab.org/news/2024-cycle-helmet-safety-ranked/ 2024-02-15T00:00:00.000Z 2024-02-15T00:00:00.000Z Imperial News

Imperial News covers HIPER's first cohort of 30+ adult cycle helmets, published openly at hiperhelmets.org.

https://headlab.org/news/2024-turban-head-protection/ 2024-01-22T00:00:00.000Z 2024-01-22T00:00:00.000Z Imperial News

First-series test data showing how turban wrap style and fabric materials change head protection in bicycle-incident impact conditions.

https://headlab.org/news/2023-loc-mechanics/ 2023-09-10T00:00:00.000Z 2023-09-10T00:00:00.000Z Imperial News

Computational modelling of elite-athlete head injuries identifies the biomechanical signature of loss of consciousness, using the Imperial College FE brain model.

https://headlab.org/news/2022-road-accident-autotriage/ 2022-11-08T00:00:00.000Z 2022-11-08T00:00:00.000Z Imperial News

On-board vehicle sensor data linked to TBI severity in the UK's RAIDS database, informing post-crash triage.

https://headlab.org/news/2022-e-scooter-head-injury/ 2022-09-14T00:00:00.000Z 2022-09-14T00:00:00.000Z Imperial News

Simulation of e-scooter falls highlights an elevated head injury risk, cited subsequently in the PACTS report on e-scooter safety.

https://headlab.org/news/2022-blood-brain-barrier-models/ 2022-04-20T00:00:00.000Z 2022-04-20T00:00:00.000Z Imperial News

Capillary-scale FE modelling of rat brain biomechanics shows how anatomy of capillaries and loading distribution interact to produce blood-brain barrier damage.

https://headlab.org/news/2021-bike-helmet-test-method/ 2021-06-15T00:00:00.000Z 2021-06-15T00:00:00.000Z Imperial News

HEAD Lab's oblique-impact protocol, the basis for the HIPER rating, accounts for the loading patterns most common in real cyclist collisions.

https://headlab.org/news/2021-precise-mapping/ 2021-04-12T00:00:00.000Z 2021-04-12T00:00:00.000Z Imperial News

The study combines biomechanics modelling with controlled cortical impacts in rats, MRI, and quantitative histopathology, showing that brain deformations at the time of injury predict structural change two weeks later.

https://headlab.org/news/2018-cte-football-model/ 2018-09-19T00:00:00.000Z 2018-09-19T00:00:00.000Z Imperial News

The Imperial College FE brain model identifies the location of pathology in chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).