Lead Principle Investigator

Carolyn Sparrey, PhD, is the lead Principle Investigator (PI) of Point of Care Health Technologies and the Rapidtech co-lead. She is an associate Director and an Executive Committee member of the STAR  (Science and Technology for Aging Research) Institute. Dr. Sparrey is an Associate Professor in the School of Mechatronics Systems Engineering at Simon Fraser University. She obtained her B.A.Sc. from the University of Waterloo and her M.A.Sc. from the University of British Columbia. Dr. Sparrey completed her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Neurosurgery at the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Sparrey’s research focus is on biomechanics and biomaterials. She also works on modeling and simulating injuries and diseases, including accident reconstruction. Dr. Sparrey also designs and evaluates injury prevention devices. Dr. Sparrey leads Simon Fraser University's Neurospine Lab, working closely with surgeons and biologists at ICORD and the California Spinal Cord Injury Consortium to develop injury models, identify injury prevention strategies and design algorithms to improve injury diagnostics.