The Divers Alert Network has announced that Dr. Jens-Christian Meiners has been awarded the 2019 DAN/R.W. Hamilton Dive Medicine Research Grant.
The grant will help further Dr. Meiners’ research into the mechanics of gas bubble formation and dissolution in spinal cord tissue. The DAN/R.W. Hamilton Dive Medicine Research Grant awards US$10,000 (~8969 Euros) for one year to support current or new research projects aimed at the prevention and/or treatment of decompression sickness.
According to DAN Vice President of Mission Dr. Petar Noble:
“This research project is challenging in both its scale and aim, and it targets something very important to divers. This grant was designed to make projects like this possible and to support the next generation of researchers who can continue Dr. Hamilton’s legacy and make diving safer for all.”
Dr. Meiners is currently a professor of physics and biophysics at the University of Michigan, and his work involves rapidly compressing and decompressing spinal cord tissue inside a magnetic resonance imaging machine. The resulting damage can then be analyzed.
Commenting on his research, Dr. Meiners stated:
“We know high pressure oxygen is useful in healing injured tissue; our hypothesis is that there’s more to it. Putting damaged tissue under pressure may be similar to compressing a wound and stitching it back together. We think this could even have implications for traumatic spinal cord injuries in general.”
