Barclay Morrison III

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) results in approximately 50,000 deaths and 85,000 permanently disabled persons per year in the United States with an estimated primary care cost of $76 billion per year. The clinical situation is quite dire as there are no drug treatments which target the underlying pathobiology of TBI. This profound need for improvements in the prevention and treatment of TBI is the driving force behind Morrison’s research. The long-term goal of his laboratory is to understand the consequences of mechanical forces on the most complex system of the human body, the brain, and to develop strategies to mitigate and perhaps reverse these injurious effects. His research explores the specific cellular, molecular, and metabolic effects of injury on brain cells in response to precisely controlled biomechanical stimuli. His research program has three main focus areas:

1. Improvement of prevention strategies through development of critical biomechanical data for the living brain
2. Identification of novel treatment options by understanding the post-traumatic pathobiology in greater detail
3. Engineering new research tools to enhance studies in the first two areas

Morrison received a BS in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1992 and a MSE and PhD in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994 and 1999, respectively.