Don Anderson is a Professor and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation at the University of Iowa, where he also holds appointments in Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical & Industrial Engineering. He is Director of the UI Orthopaedic Biomechanics Laboratory, as well. Dr. Anderson holds a BSE in Biomedical Engineering, as well as an MS and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering (Biomechanics emphasis), all from the University of Iowa. He has over twenty-five years of post-doctoral professional experience, first in Pittsburgh as Director of the Biomechanics Research Laboratory at the Allegheny-Singer Research Institute, then in Minneapolis as Director of the Biomechanics Laboratory at the Minneapolis Sports Medicine Center, and finally, back in Iowa City since 2002. A Fellow of the American Society of Biomechanics, Don has served both as its Secretary/Treasurer and its President. He is a member of the Orthopaedic Research Society, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Orthopaedic Trauma Association, the Osteoarthritis Research Society International, and the International Society of Biomechanics.

Dr. Anderson has extensive training and 30 years of experience with image analysis, computer modeling, and computational stress analysis in musculoskeletal applications involving medical imaging source data. His primary research focus throughout his career has been on articular joint biomechanics. Dr. Anderson serves as an Associate Director of a National Institutes of Health-funded Center of Research Translation (CORT) studying the mechanical relationship between joint injury and the subsequent development of post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA). This work utilizes a multidisciplinary team approach, involving an active group of clinicians, engineers, and biologists. He is also the Principal Investigator of a project within the CORT enabling the use of innovative methods for assessing acute fracture severity and chronic contact stress exposure in patients with intra-articular fractures. These methods provide PTOA risk prediction from imaging studies standardly obtained in the course of treatment. He has collaborated closely on this line of research with Dr. Larry Marsh, a renowned orthopaedic trauma surgeon, and their work received the 2011 Orthopedic Research and Education Foundation Clinical Research Award. Dr. Anderson’s most recent work focuses on the scaling up of methods in patient-specific articular joint modeling for the carrying out of large population-based studies.