In 2025, the Up and Comer Award was given to four young scholars, Drs. Gauri Desai, Hannah Houde, Maria Ramos, and Lucinda Williamson. Below is a summary of the progress of two of our Up and Comers over the past year. I’m thankful for the large impact that this small award has on our early career scientists because of the culture of mentorship we have established in our Society. Dr. Houde summarized her thoughts on the award by saying, “the Up and Comer Award is a great opportunity for young postdoctoral fellows to expand their network, methodological and technical skills, and communication of complex research to various audiences.”
Dr. Gauri Desai, 2025 ASB Up and Comer Award winner
Dr. Gauri Desai is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University’s Female Athlete Science and Translational Research Program (FASTR). As a recipient of the ASB Up and Comer Award, Dr. Desai was guided by ASB Fellow Dr. Brian Umberger at the University of Michigan in building a pregnancy-specific OpenSim model. At present, OpenSim’s generic models like the Rajagopal et al., 2016 model, for example, are constructed from either primarily male-based on mixed-sex based bony geometry and muscle parameters. While these models scale to individual experimental data, making scaled models person-specific, sex-dependent features like pelvis morphology are overlooked by geometric scaling, often biasing scaling towards male anatomy. To address this, Dr. Umberger’s lab is developing a female-specific OpenSim model which Dr. Desai has been working with in the past year to adapt to pregnancy. So far, she has been able to add an abdominal body to the torso of the female-specific model to reflect pregnancy, scale it to a pregnant woman’s experimental data, and run a torque-driven tracking simulation to generate an initial guess for a muscle-driven simulation that is currently a work-in-progress.
The ASB Up and Comer Award enabled Dr. Desai to deep-dive into musculoskeletal modeling, helping her to not only hone her technical skills, but highlighting the importance of patience, curiosity, rigor, and trial-and-error when exploring a research domain that is largely unknown. She continues to learn from Dr. Umberger and his team and looks forward to providing useful insights into pregnancy-related changes to the biomechanics and energetics of running gait. Additionally, Dr. Desai continues to study female athlete hormonal, bone, and biomechanical responses to training, postpartum return-to-running considerations, and is keen on securing an industry-based research role in women’s health and performance next year.
Dr. Hannah Houde, 2025 ASB Up and Comer Award winner
Dr. Hannah Houde is currently a postdoctoral researcher at The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB). Over the past year, with mentorship from ASB Fellow Dr. Jill McNitt-Gray, Dr. Houde had the opportunity to grow as a biomechanist professionally, academically, and analytically. Dr. McNitt-Gray connected her to her research team, COACH WELL, at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, where the team works to translate biomechanical research into practical use by training coaches who directly support athlete development in adaptive sports and recreation. Through Dr. McNitt-Gray and the COACH WELL team, Dr. Houde expanded her knowledge on how to use biomechanical data to generate meaningful insights for coaches, athletes, clinicians, and training staff in adaptive sports, so they can directly apply findings to rehabilitation strategies, equipment modifications, and training for practice and competition. Weekly meetings with the team have sharpened her ability to communicate those findings clearly. This award has also expanded her network to include other parasport groups, such as Michigan Adaptive Athletics, whose focus is on improving athlete health and experiences through research. This ongoing collaboration and mentorship has led Dr. Houde and Dr. McNitt-Gray to submit conference abstracts and book chapters together. Dr. Houde has also received support from Dr. McNitt-Gray on funding applications. This mentorship will continue through other funding opportunities focused on promoting healthy, sustained participation for adaptive athletes, as well as through Dr. McNitt-Gray’s efforts working alongside committees for the LA 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and the many other exciting opportunities ahead for this area of research.
Thanks to all the ASB Fellows who help sponsor this award and mentor these Up and Comers in our Society!