Dr. David Wang

 Dr. David Wang is a sports medicine physician that studies the impact of specific types of jumps and spins in figure skating. He studies how much G force is applied to the skaters while they are completing their revolutions to understand how much impact their brains are experiencing and whether these experiences mimic that of low-impact concussions. Although not a physicist by trade, Dr. Wang studies an interdisciplinary field of sports medicine and the physics that exists in daily sports activities. 

Most notably, Dr. Wang studied the case of figure skater Lucinda Ruh, who was renowned for her amazing and breathtakingly fast spins. Following her competitive career, Ruh suffered from an array of debilitating neurological conditions. This interested Dr. Wang, who has a master’s degree in exercise physiology and is a practicing sports medicine physician. His primary research interests lie in the study of non-traditional forms of concussions and concussion recovery.

Ultimately, Dr. Wang’s research revealed that the symptoms Ruh was experiencing were the result of repeated exposures to a centrifuge-like rotational experience, resulting in blood pooling into the head during the spin, and then rapidly draining out of the head immediately following the spin. He emphasized that although the G force of such spins is significantly smaller than traditional concussion forces (such as football collisions), the repeated and prolonged rotational experiences may have an additive effect. Ultimately, he hopes to understand whether the concussion-like symptoms of skaters such as Ruh are independent of concussions themselves or a product of rotation-induced concussions, as well as develop methods to  accurately measure the G force that skaters experiences during their rotational movements.