Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Bioengineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013
  • B.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Central Florida, 2007
Licenses & Certifications
  • Northwestern University Center for Public Safety, Traffic Crash Reconstruction for Engineers
Professional Honors
  • National Science Foundation IGERT Fellow
  • Georgia Tech Bioengineering Best Student Publication Award
  • National Tau Beta Pi Campbell Scholar
Professional Affiliations
  • Society of Automotive Engineers—SAE
  • American Society of Biomechanics—ASB
  • Biomedical Engineering Society - BMES

Sarah Sharpe, Ph.D., is a principal in Exponent's Biomechanics practice with over 20 years of experience performing biomechanical research and analyses. She specializes in assessments involving human movement and loading, human motor control and fatigue, and injury mechanics, potential, and mitigation. She applies her expertise in a variety of settings including automotive and industrial investigations, premises liability assessments, product evaluations, and restraint system analyses.

Dr. Sharpe has extensive testing experience and worked for nearly 10 years at Exponent's Phoenix Test and Engineering Center where she performed full scale-automotive crash testing, sled testing, airbag investigations, driving demonstrations, motorcycle-operator testing, and component-level testing involving anthropomorphic test devices (crash test dummies). She has coordinated and conducted large-scale human participant testing to investigate the relationships between product use and human movement, loading, fatigue, and injury risk.

Before joining Exponent, Dr. Sharpe completed a National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) fellowship where she focused on Neuroengineering. She also served as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Georgia Institute of Technology's Complex Rheology and Biomechanics (CRAB) Lab. Her research involved analysis and integration of the physics of complex substrates during animal movement to understand locomotion neuromechanics on a variety of terrains. Dr. Sharpe has additionally conducted research in the Robotics and Autonomous Controls Laboratory at the University of Central Florida and in the Laboratory for Neuroengineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Automotive Evaluations

Dr. Sharpe has extensive hands-on experience conducting full-scale automotive crash testing, sled testing, and component-level evaluations using anthropomorphic test devices (ATDs), commonly known as crash test dummies. Her testing programs have addressed frontal impacts, side impacts, rear impacts, and rollover scenarios, as well as driving demonstrations and motorcycle operator testing. She has evaluated ATD biofidelity, assessed loading on large-occupant surrogates, and examined facial load using biofidelic tools. Her work supports reconstructing crash scenarios and evaluating occupant responses and injury potential under controlled, repeatable conditions.

Restraint Systems

Dr. Sharpe provides biomechanical evaluations of automotive restraint systems — including airbags, seat belts, seats, and child restraints — to assess their performance and relationship to occupant loading, injury, and injury mitigation in real-world and simulated crash events. She has investigated airbag deployment characteristics, seat belt loading and geometry, and seat structural response in the context of occupant loading and protection. Her work integrates test data, ATD instrumentation outputs, and biomechanical injury criteria to evaluate restraint systems performance in non-standard test environments such as collisions involving high speeds, multiple impacts, out-of-position occupants, unusual in-vehicle cargo or objects, and occupants of varying size.

Injury Mechanism & Potential

Dr. Sharpe has evaluated injury mechanism and potential across a broad spectrum of incident types, including on- and off-road collisions, premises liability events (slip, trip, and fall), recreational activities, occupational injuries, and theme park incidents. These evaluations include assessing slip resistance, helmet testing, using motion capture and force data collection from human subjects, cadaver testing, testing with physical models, analysis of publicly available field accident and injury databases, and utilizing biomechanical literature and established injury criteria.

Consumer Product Analysis and Design

Dr. Sharpe has conducted both targeted and large-scale human participant testing paradigms designed to characterize the relationship between product use and human movement, loading, comfort, fatigue, and injury risk. Her work encompasses the use of wearable devices, equipment, or clothing/footwear on human locomotion, postural stability, and task performance across a range of environments and populations. She has utilized motion capture (optical and IMU-based), musculoskeletal modeling, electromyography (EMG), strength measurements, and 3D scanning to evaluate product fit, contextualize comfort assessments, and inform wearable product integration with objective, data-driven findings.

Expert Witness Support and Testimony Experience

Dr. Sharpe has been qualified as a biomechanics expert and offered testimony in both state and federal courts on topics including, but not limited to, human movement and motor control, occupant kinematics and loading, injury mechanism, injury potential, and occupant-restraint interactions.