Director: Coen A.Wijdicks, Ph.D.
Founded in 1988 by orthopaedic surgeon Dr. J. Richard Steadman, the Steadman Philippon Research Institute (SPRI) moved to Vail, Colorado, in 1990 with one researcher. In 2010, Dr. Marc Philippon’s name was added to mark the succession of the Institute and recognize his research contributions to the fields of hip arthroscopy and sports related hip injuries. Today, there are 32 employees including engineers, scientists, medical fellows, international scholars, and research assistants. The Institute is dedicated to keeping people of all ages physically active through orthopaedic research and education in the areas of osteoarthritis, healing, rehabilitation, and injury prevention.
The Institute’s Department of BioMedical Engineering is a multidisciplinary laboratory that applies quantitative, analytical, and integrative methods to the field of orthopaedic medicine. The Department has grown, adding expertise, technology and equipment, while exponentially increasing the quality and quantity of research through collaborative efforts with national and international institutions. The SPRI Research and Educational Laboratories, completely renovated in 2011, now include a BioMotion Laboratory and a Biomechanical Testing Laboratory. The BioMotion Laboratory incorporates a biplane fluoroscopy and motion capture system complete with a sports performance area and force plates to analyze normal, injured and treated patients during sporting activity. The Biomechanical Testing laboratory centers around two primary testing devices: a six-degree of freedom KUKA KR 60-3 robot and an Instron ElectroPuls E10000 linear-torsion testing machine.
