Immaculata High School launched the Career Shadowing Program to give seniors the opportunity to match with an individual working in their career of interest, MyCentralJersey.com reported. Three students shadowed HSS assistant scientist Carl Imhauser, PhD, to study the mechanics of human joints and the progression of osteoarthritis after an injury. According to the article, all of the students are prospective Mechanical Engineering majors.

"During their visit James, Michael and Sean met practicing engineers, who use their training to analyze MRI scans of patients' knees to identify if they have osteoarthritis, program robots to quantify how the knee joints move after reconstructing the anterior cruciate ligaments, use motion capture technology to evaluate how athletes run and pitch, as well as design and develop longer lasting and better functioning total knee, shoulder, elbow and hip replacements," said Dr. Imhauser.

After the experience, one student said "I learned what an amazing place that the Hospital for Special Surgery truly is and saw very distinctly the importance of understanding the engineering side of the human body and the number of opportunities for a mechanical engineer in this field."

"Our hope was to show to the students examples of how engineering has a direct impact on the clinical practice of medicine and society as a whole. I also thought that it was important that the students hear 'pearls of wisdom' from the engineers that they met throughout the day; they gave advice that most engineers probably wish they had when they were standing in the students 'shoes,'" Dr. Imhauser noted.

Read the full article at mycentraljersey.com