The Principal Investigator
Dr. Lara Thompson
As a child, Dr. Lara Thompson, would spend many hours studying in her father's laboratory. She noticed the halls and offices were occupied by those who did not look like her and they would struggle to understand her weaknesses. Through her experiences, she realized she did not have a role model so decided to become the kind of person her younger self would look up to.
Dr. Thompson has become a mentor to her students and staff. In addition she has built a state of the art biomechanics research lab in DC, now she plans to do it again here at her alma mater; UMass Lowell.
In addition to being a thoughtful educator she is an award winning researcher. During her first spring as a professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Dr. Lara Thompson was inducted as a 2026 American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) Fellow in Washington, DC. She was nominated the Summer before by the renowned Muyinatu Bell of Johns Hopkins University, also an Alan T. Waterman Laureate (2024).
Within the last decade she has been recognized with several awards. These awards are Blavatnik Award Nominee 2023, Alan T. Waterman Award 2022 (our nation’s top honor for early career scientists and engineers), BEYA STEM Innovator 2019, and Diverse Issues in Higher Education Emerging Scholar 2017.
