Adam C Abraham, PhD

During my tenure as a doctoral candidate, I was able to apply my pre-existing skills as an engineer to the field of musculoskeletal biomechanics. For my thesis work, funded in part by a Ruth L. Kirschstein Pre-Doctoral Fellowship (F31), I established the structure and function of healthy meniscal entheses in humans and determined how primary osteoarthritis erodes enthesis mechanics and morphology at the micro-scale. I then trained at Washington University’s School of Medicine under an institutional T32 fellowship from the Department of Bone & Mineral Diseases. There I benefitted from a diverse research community to tackle issues ranging from improving clinical measurements of bone quality to the pro-inflammatory effect of diabetes mellitus on intervertebral disc health. After a brief period in industry, I returned to the bench as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery working with Dr. Stavros Thomopoulos, an expert in rotator cuff pathology. At Columbia, and in collaboration with Dr. Neal Millar at the University of Glasgow, I gained experience in mechanistic biology studying the link between inflammation and chronic rotator cuff tendinopathy. Now, at the University of Michigan my goal is to understand the biological mechanisms that drive chronic tendon disease and develop novel therapeutic strategies to treat tendinopathy and accelerate tendon healing.

My multi-disciplinary background spans the fields of mechanical and biomedical engineering with additional training in metabolic diseases and immunology. My research expertise includes multi-scale biomechanics, inflammation, and musculoskeletal disease modeling. My research is focused on 1) Musculoskeletal tissue pathophysiology and mechanics, 2) Exercise and overuse mechanobiology of connective soft tissues (e.g. tendons, ligaments, etc.), 3) Cell-ECM interactions that regulate the inflammatory response