Traumatic brain injury (TBI) occurs when the brain is subjected to large impact forces, accelerations or pressures. Past BTG research focused on high-strain rate events which occur on relatively fast time scales (< 1 millisecond).

Current and future BTG research focuses on forming accurate risk assessment criteria and TBI prevention by forming a unified picture of TBI across strain rates and time scales ranging from low-speed (< 10 m/s) long time (0.1 seconds) events such as falls and collisions to high-speed (>400 m/s) short time scale (< 1 millisecond) events such as blast injury and ballistic events.

We hope to develop accurate risk assessment criteria in terms of threshold forces, pressures, stresses, acceleration, energy, impulse, and rise times for these quantities. This will facilitate improvements in protective equipment and post-exposure risk assessment (dosimetry), as well as provide new tools to measure performance of existing protective equipment and effectiveness of systems in service of national defense and homeland security.