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Tyler Rooks

Tyler Rooks, PhD

Assistant Professor

Locations

  • Neurosurgery
  • 8701 Watertown Plank Rd.
    Milwaukee, WI 53226

Education

PhD, Biomedical Engineering, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, 2024
MS, Mechanical Engineering, Boise State University, Boise, ID, 2011
BS, Engineering, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, 2009

Biography

Dr. Tyler Rooks is an assistant professor in the Department of Neurosurgery and has a secondary appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. He received his PhD in biomedical engineering in 2024 investigating the regional strain response of the brain under different impact conditions as a potential predictor of the varying symptom profiles observed in concussion. Dr. Rooks served as a Principal Investigator from 2017 to 2025 at the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory (USAARL) conducting research on traumatic brain injury, the characterization of military operational exposures using novel data collection methods and wearable sensors, and spine biomechanics.

Dr. Rooks’ research combines multidisciplinary methods including experimental studies with human subjects, cadaveric specimens, and pre-clinical animal models, along with computational modeling studies to investigate brain and spine injury biomechanics. His work seeks to describe the mechanisms for brain and spine injuries under traumatic and repeated lower severity exposures. In addition, his work seeks to develop a model describing the relationship between repeated exposure, repeated injury, and degeneration. Dr. Rooks’ research portfolio includes studies in automotive, military, sports, and clinical biomechanics using computational modeling (finite element, machine learning, etc.), experiments (animal, human, anthropomorphic test devices, etc.), and real-world data analytics.

Research Interests

Research Interests • Traumatic brain injury • Impact trauma biomechanics • Automotive safety • Sports biomechanics • Military injury biomechanics • Clinical spine biomechanics • Computational modeling

Publications