Christian Franck

Christian Franck is a mechanical engineer specializing in cellular biomechanics and new experimental mechanics techniques at the micro and nanoscale. He received his B.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Virginia in 2003, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 2004 and 2008. Dr. Franck held a post-doctoral position at Harvard investigating brain and neural trauma. He was an assistant and associate professor in mechanics at Brown University from 2009-2018, and is now the Grainger Institute for Engineering Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin.

His lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has developed unique three-dimensional full-field imaging capabilities based on confocal microscopy and digital volume correlation. Current application areas of these three-dimensional microscopy techniques include understanding the 3D deformation behavior of neurons in the brain during traumatic brain injuries, the adhesion and migration behavior of human neutrophils in 3D environments, and the role of non-linear material deformations in soft matter.