Jill Higginson

Jill Startzell Higginson is an American biomechanical engineer and an expert on gait. Her research involves the observation of gait, the contributions of different muscles to gait, and the diagnosis of muscular problems involving gait. She is George W. Laird Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Delaware, and the head of the university's Neuromuscular Biomechanics Lab.

Education and career
Higginson majored in mechanical engineering at Cornell University, graduating in 1996. After a master's degree in bioengineering from Pennsylvania State University in 1998, she completed a PhD in mechanical engineering at Stanford University in 2005, jointly advised by Felix Zajac and Scott L. Delp.

She joined the University of Delaware as an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 2004, and was tenured there in 2010.

Recognition
Higginson was elected as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2019, "for contributions to the field of neuromuscular biomechanics of pathological movement, musculoskeletal modeling and simulation, and undergraduate research and education". She was named as an ASME Fellow in 2021, and as a Fellow of the American Society of Biomechanics in 2023.