Rate My Professor Tammy Haut Donahue

Professor Tammy Haut Donahue is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she served as the founding department head of the newly established Biomedical Engineering Department starting in 2018. She earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Michigan State University in 1995, an M.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Davis in 1997, and a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of California, Davis in 2000. Following her Ph.D., she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Orthopaedics at Pennsylvania State University from 2000 to 2001. Her prior academic appointments include faculty positions at Michigan Technological University from 2001 to 2011 in Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Mechanics with an adjunct appointment in Biomedical Engineering, and at Colorado State University as Professor and Associate Department Head for Undergraduate Studies in Mechanical Engineering, along with core faculty status in the School of Biomedical Engineering.

Haut Donahue specializes in analytical and experimental biomechanics of the musculoskeletal system, with a focus on the knee joint menisci and ligamentous attachments. As principal investigator, she has received approximately $14 million in research funding from sources including the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. For her pioneering research elucidating the complex structure and function of knee joint components, she was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2020. Her influential publications include "A finite element model of the human knee joint for the study of tibio-femoral contact" (Journal of Biomechanical Engineering, 2002), "How the stiffness of meniscal attachments and meniscal material properties affect tibio-femoral contact pressure computed using a validated finite element model of the human knee joint" (Journal of Biomechanics, 2003), "Transversely isotropic tensile material properties of skeletal muscle tissue" (Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, 2010), "3D finite element model of meniscectomy: changes in joint contact behavior" (2006), and "The state of tissue hydration determines the strain-rate-sensitive stiffness of human patellar tendon" (Journal of Biomechanics, 1997). These works have advanced finite element modeling and orthopedic biomechanics research.