Brief Biography
Dr. Sarah A. Bentil is a faculty member in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Iowa State University of Science and Technology. She is also the Director of The Bentil Group. Her research interests are in the field of soft tissue biomechanics and biomaterials. Dr. Bentil’s research program is interdisciplinary and includes the application of innovative solutions to identify, treat and/or diagnose injuries and diseases in the brain. Members of her research program are developing and employing noninvasive experimental techniques to characterize the mechanical behavior of the brain and other soft materials. Computational studies are also being conducted to gain insight into how the response of the soft materials relate to various biomedical problems. In 2015, Dr. Bentil completed her one year postdoctoral appointment with the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute (HEMI), located at Johns Hopkins University. She received her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in Mechanical Engineering in 2013. Prior to her studies at The Ohio State University, she worked as an Engineer at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which is an agency of the United States Department of Transportation. She received her M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her undergraduate degrees (B.S.) in both Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics were obtained from the University of Vermont.
Education
- Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, The Ohio State University, 2013
- M.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 2006
- B.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Vermont, 2003
- B.S., Mathematics, University of Vermont, 2003
Interest Areas
- Soft tissue biomechanics
- Biomaterials
- Traumatic brain injuries
- Blast impact injury mechanisms
- High-speed imaging
- Brain-machine interfaces
- Blunt impact injury mechanisms
Selected Honors and Awards
- William March Scholar in Mechanical Engineering, 2016 – 2020
- Best Presentation Award in Human Factors/Biomedical category, 8th Annual Dayton Engineering Sciences Symposium, 2013
Selected Publications
- SA. Bentil, KT. Ramesh, and TD. Nguyen (2016). A dynamic inflation test for soft materials. Experimental Mechanics 56(5), 759–769.
- SA. Bentil and RB. Dupaix (2014). Exploring the mechanical behavior of degrading swine neural tissue at low strain rates via the fractional Zener constitutive model. Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials 30, 83–90.
- SS. Rao, SA. Bentil, J. DeJesus, J. Larison, A. Hissong, R. Dupaix, A. Sarkar, and JO. Winter (2012). Inherent interfacial mechanical gradients in 3D hydrogels influence tumor cell behaviors. PLoS ONE 7(4), e35852.
- SA Bentil, S. MacLean, and RB. Dupaix (2010). Viscoelastic properties of macaque neural tissue at low strain rates. In:Proceedings of the ASME 2010 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE). Vol. 2. Paper No. IMECE2010-39071. Vancouver, BC CANADA, pp.853–857.
- AM. Eigen, SA. Bentil, and DL. Smith (2007). The crash problem for advanced restraints. In: 20th Enhanced Safety Vehicles Conference Proceedings. Paper No. 07-0234. Lyon, FRANCE, pp.853–857.
