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Corinne Henak
September 9, 2024

Tenure and Promotion to Associate Professor Awarded to Corinne Henak

Written By: Kassi Akers

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Congratulations to Corinne Henak, PhD on earning tenure and being promoted to an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Henak has been with the department since 2015 and is known for her outstanding research, dedication to students, and collaboration with colleagues.

Henak oversees The Henak Lab where she focuses her research on increasing fundamental knowledge and tool development to improve quality of life. Specifically, her lab concentrates on the burden of musculoskeletal diseases in humans and animals. Some examples of her research findings include: 

  • Fundamental information on the role of poroelastic and viscoelastic relaxations in cartilage failure (spoiler: they are very important!), and estimates of toughness in porcine and human cartilage (in collaboration with Melih Eriten).
  • Translation of optical redox imaging from cancer biology into orthopedics, showing that the oxidative-reductive balance in cartilage shifts rapidly in response to stimuli including mechanical loading and oxygen tension (in collaboration with Melissa Skala).

Moving forward, Henak’s research goals are to expand the tissues/materials her lab evaluates and push translation of research findings. 

Outside of research, Henak has a passion for connecting and mentoring students. During her time at UW-Madison, she has worked with more than 30 driven trainees across career stages (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doc) and disciplines (Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Comparative Biomedical Sciences). She enjoys teaching Mechanics of Materials, because it allows her to impact students early in their engineering career. And is looking forward to developing a research class for undergraduate students, as part of CAREER funding, and teaching an upper-level experimental mechanics course. 

This promotion is well deserved and we look forward to seeing the influence Henak continues to have on students, our department, UW-Madison, and her field.