Taking it one step at a time
Handrails are something that most of us take for granted. In fact, that is exactly how third-year Mechanical Engineering student Catarina Rodriguez perceived them prior to this past summer.
Rodriguez was interested in exploring research, and applied for an NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA) with Assistant Professor Vicki Komisar. “As I investigated possible research I could explore, it opened my eyes to a research that I didn’t even consider to be in the realm of engineering.”
Their project looked at sex-based differences in loading patterns, and the type of forces that individuals apply to handrails.