Recent graduate Sarah Lancianese received a Young Investigator Award at the 2009 World Congress on Osteoarthritis in Montreal, Quebec. She presented her work on the use of biomechanical models to understand risks for knee osteoarthritis in a plenary session including the 6 highest rated abstracts from young investigators. This abstract represented the final chapter of her PhD dissertation which she defended in July, 2009. The overall project, supervised by BME Associate Professor Amy L. Lerner, investigated the combined effects of obesity, limb alignment and bone mechanical properties on the knee joint. Dr. Lancianese is now a design engineer at Wright Medical, Inc. in Memphis TN.