Faculty Status

Professor Emeritus

Biography

Dr. Cavanaugh was part of Wayne State University for 37 years, earning his bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees in civil engineering and completing. He completed his medical degree in 1984. In 1985, he joined Wayne State University's research team at the Bioengineering Center where he conducted research in impact biomechanics and neurophysiology.

In impact biomechanics, he has published papers on the effects of side impacts on the human shoulder, thorax, abdomen and pelvis and the ability of padding to mitigate these injuries. In addition, he and his group studied axonal injury, concussion and the mechanical properties of shoulder ligaments.

Dr. Cavanaugh's laboratory also studied mechanisms of low back pain, neck pain, sciatica and axonal injury using neurophysiologic techniques. He and his group received the 1995 Kappa Delta Award of the AmericanAcademy of Orthopaedic Surgeons for low back pain research. His group also studied neck pain and whiplash through funding from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. This work received the John Paul Stapp best paper award at the 2005 Stapp Car Crash Conference (Lu et al, 2005).

Education

B.S., Civil Engineering, Michigan State University
M.S., Civil Engineering, Wayne State University
M.D., Michigan State University

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