During my doctoral training from 2017 to 2020 I studied cervical spine injury mechanisms in rugby impacts. I combined lab and field based in vivo, in vitro and in silico methods to investigate the mechanisms related to catastrophic cervical spine injuries in rugby tackling and scrummaging. Using these methods I designed and developed a novel framework that provided actionable data to the sport's national governing body through quarterly reports so that board members could base rule and safety decisions off representative data.

Studies related to this work have been published in peer reviewed journals and presented at national and international conferences:

• Model Validation (Silvestros et al.; PLOS ONE 2019)

• Neck Muscle Force Estimation (Silvestros et al., Journal of Biomechanical Engineering 2022)

• Risk of Impact Location and Technique on Spinal Injury (Silvestros et al. , Annals of Biomedical Engineering 2024 [Under Review])

Collaborating with a local professional rugby team we created a novel instrumented scrum cap design that was used to monitor loading and fatigue on the teams academy players during training bouts. This is crucial information for the coaches not only for athlete conditioning and tapering but also load management to mitigate risk on neck injuries. This work was also presented at the 2019 International Society of Biomechanics Conference in Calgary.