UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Silvia Salinas Blemker, the Robert Thomson Distinguished Professor at the University of Virginia, will present the 2023 Richard Nelson Memorial Lecture, “Illuminating the Hidden Connections: Unraveling Muscle Form-Function through the Study of a Wide Range of Muscles and Populations,” from 3:05 to 4:20 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 30, in 127 Noll Laboratory at Penn State's University Park campus.

The Richard Nelson Memorial Lecture is an annual lecture hosted by the Department of Kinesiology in the Penn State College of Health and Human Development. It is free and open to the public.

The presentation will discuss Blemker’s use of imaging and computational modeling techniques to understand the relationships between muscle structure and function across different muscles and populations. The techniques also represent a range of contexts, from the research lab to medical clinics to the consumer market.

Blemker is a distinguished professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia, where she directs the Multi-scale Muscle Mechanophysiology (M³) lab.

The Richard Nelson Memorial Lecture honors the legacy of Richard Nelson (1932-2020), a Penn State emeritus faculty member and pioneer in the fields of sports biomechanics.

During his time at Penn State, Nelson founded the Biomechanics Laboratory on campus and was a founding member of the International Society of Biomechanics, for whom he served as president from 1975 to 1980. He also was crucial to the implementation of recording Olympic athlete performance and later served on the Olympic Committee’s Sub-Commission on Biomechanics and Physiology.

The Nelson Memorial Lecture was started in 2021 and hosts distinguished speakers annually who are considered to be leaders in the field of biomechanics.

For more information, visit the College of Health and Human Development's website.