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Feature Articles Philip Bayly practices head safety
Feature Articles Philip Bayly practices head safety | Philip Bayly practices head safety |
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The Hope Center's Philip Bayly, Ph.D., who studies the dynamics of brain movement and injury, is careful to practice head safety himself.
Patricia Rice, Washington University Record He's very much a man in a helmet, wearing it about four times each weekday. He's not obsessed with his personal head safety; he just understands the dynamics of head injuries more than almost everyone else on the planet. Grants from the National Institutes of Health and the McDonnell Center for Higher Brain Function are helping him and his collaborators use costly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine brain deformation and function. Teammates are from the School of Engineering & Applied Science and the School of Medicine. In all but the worst weather, with helmet tightly in place, Bayly rides from his Clayton home to his office in Jolley Hall, and then later cycles from Jolley to the medical school's Biomedical Magnetic Resonance Imaging Lab. On Friday nights, he plays soccer with the "Jammin' Joes" and Monday nights with "The Orange Team." Bayly generally avoids "headers" — hitting the ball with his head.On Sunday nights his wife, Rebecca Rugen, M.D., an internist, plays on a women's soccer team. Together the couple, both former college varsity athletes, cheers their two children at pre-teen soccer games. At games and at cocktail parties, friends often ask about his brain-dynamics study findings. When others see stars after a head impact, he talks about MRIs that show deformation inside the brain after impact. Nearly always he hands out the same caution. "After someone has had one concussion, they need to be especially careful," he says. His research has made him a more cautious, but no less avid of an athlete. When he and other parents coach his two children's soccer teams, they discourage the young players from doing frequent headers and are cautious about handling falls and collisions. His brain-dynamics team has observed how human brains respond to voluntary skull acceleration. Volunteers — almost always their subject is a member of the research team — experience about 1/10 the force of an adult player hitting a soccer ball with his or her head. This research has uncovered explanations of unexpected brain-injury patterns. The front of the brain, even when the blow is to the rear, can be particularly deformed, as the brain pulls away from the skull, he says. Bayly is awed by the MRI's sensitivity, which can provide an image of the brain's motion as shear waves at musical frequencies travel through it. The study is not finished, but the former Dartmouth College varsity lacrosse player knows enough to try to steer his children, Zachary, 9, and Alison, 12, from unnecessarily putting their noggins in harm's way. "I hope that my children will never take up football or boxing," he says. Bayly, 41, a New Hampshire native, is a second-generation professor and scientist. His father, Brian Bayly, taught geology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His mother curtailed her astronomy work to raise their five children. Phil Bayly is the middle sibling. After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, N.H., he went to Dartmouth College, then earned a master's degree at Brown University and a doctorate from Duke University. As a young engineer, he worked for the state of Connecticut, for a medical nonprofit and in industry. As a research engineer for the Shriners Hospital, he designed prosthetic and orthotic devices for children. He came to Washington University in 1993, and holds a joint appointment in the School of Engineering & Applied Science's mechanical and aerospace engineering and biomedical engineering departments. In his Jolley office, he displays a decade-old highly polished aluminum "sculpture" that any art collector would appreciate. It's a sample of high-speed machining, another of Bayly's research efforts. The extremely lightweight aluminum tube has three channels but it is monolithic — meaning the three sections have no seams and no bolts but were machined, or carved, from one metal block. The tube is faster and lighter to make than the multiple airplane parts it replaced. He and Boeing engineer Jerry Halley designed it for fighter jets. The high-speed design costs Boeing less to manufacture. Its light weight makes it cheaper to fly. Most Boeing military jets made after 1997 use their high-speed machining designs. "When I see one fly, I am pretty sure that Jerry and I have affected how they make that plane," he says. Another office decoration is a battered cane that hangs from a high book shelf. It's not related to any injury of his. Last year he turned 40, and his colleague, Guy M. Genin, Ph.D., assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, gave Bayly the old cane as a joke. Bayly laughed and hung it like a trophy. He encourages his students to laugh at themselves, too. Even though his undergraduate engineering class in dynamics often has 50 students, he uses the Socratic teaching method. He tosses out problems and encourages students to use their knowledge and imagination to solve them. When students are more actively involved in learning, they retain more, he says. "No one wants to listen to anyone talk for 90 minutes," he says. His methods have earned him respect. Graduate students gave him their "Big Fish" mentoring award in 2001, the same year he got the School of Engineering & Applied Science's Advisor of the Year Award. In 2004, that school named him Professor of the Year. Bayly is also held in high regard by support staff. "He's just a wonderful collaborator, so easy-going and always so appreciative of whatever we do for him or his graduate students," says Debra Brouk, coordinator of the School of Medicine's Biomedical Magnetic Resonance Imaging Lab. She called him a brilliant man with the too-rare grace of never failing to say thank you. During Valentine's week, he gave the MRI lab support staff a large box of Bissinger's chocolates. How did he develop an interest in brain-dynamics research? "It was nothing dramatic, just talking to doctors who also love sports, ride bikes," Bayly says. He chatted with the University's medical school emergency-department doctors. He understood dynamics. They saw puzzling brain injuries. A research team evolved. Genin, Larry Taber, Ph.D., professor of biomedical engineering, Chris Kroenke, Ph.D., assistant professor of radiology and Jeffery J. Neil, Ph.D., the Allen & Josephine B. Green Professor of neurology, began experiments in the medical school's Biomedical Magnetic Resonance Imaging Lab with the support of lab director Joseph Ackerman, Ph.D., the William Greenleaf Eliot Professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences. Philip V. Bayly University positions: Lilyan and E. Lisle Hughes Professor in Engineering; associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering Education: Docorate in mechanical engineering, Duke University, 1993; master's in engineering, Brown University, 1987; bachelor's in engineering science, Dartmouth College, 1986 Family: Wife, Rebecca Rugen, M.D., daughter, Alison, 12, son, Zachary, 9 Bayly took a sabbatical to study neuroanatomy working mostly with John W. Olney, M.D., the John P. Feighner Professor of Psychiatry and an authority on brain development and the impact of drugs and alcohol on the brain. "His mentoring has been very valuable," Bayly says. He believes that the team's MRI brain research could be done in only a few other places in the nation — maybe The Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins Medical School and Duke. At some schools with larger engineering schools, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, such interdisciplinary teams may be less likely to get the chance to mesh, he says. As the team's research continues, he believes that the dynamics it finds will help head injuries treatment. "They'll have more information about what is torn, or stressed and the deformation of the brain," he says. A secondary effect could be improved helmets, he adds. Bayly values the unique and comfortable lifestyle at the University compared with that of many other engineering schools. He calls his Clayton neighborhood "nearly ideal." Few major universities would provide big-city cultural offerings and still allow him to bike less than a mile along tree-lined side streets to his office. While his East Coast friends are stuck in commuter traffic, he's playing soccer. He considers it idyllic that both their children walk to their Clayton public grade school. Bayly is excited that his research team may make discoveries that may forever improve the way brain impact injuries are treated, but his children won't let scientific accomplishment go to his head. "Sometimes they say they want to be neurosurgeons," he says. "But recently Zach said he prefers to make people happy, so he'd like to run a bar." His contagious laugh rippled through his office. |
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