Laurel Kuxhaus

Laurel Kuxhaus is an American biomechanical engineer whose research focuses on the mechanics of soft and hard tissues in joints such as the elbow and ankle, and the effects of injuries on those joints. She is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the Wallace H. Coulter School of Engineering at Clarkson University.

Education and career
Kuxhaus was a double major in engineering mechanics and music as an undergraduate at Michigan State University, where she graduated in 2001. After a 2003 master's degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University, she completed a Ph.D. in bioengineering in 2008 at the University of Pittsburgh. Her doctoral dissertation, Development of a feedback-controlled elbow simulator: design validation and clinical application, was jointly advised by Jeffrey S. Vipperman and Mark Carl Miller.

At Clarkson University, she has directed the Orthopaedic Biomechanics Laboratory since 2009. After a leave from Clarkson to serve as an ASME Congressional Fellow in Bioengineering in the office of congressman Dan Lipinski, and then as a program director at the National Science Foundation from 2019 to 2023, she was promoted to full professor in 2023.

Recognition
Kuxhaus was named as an ASME Fellow by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2017. In 2024 she became a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, "for advancements in musculoskeletal biomechanics, medical device design, technology transfer, education and pedagogy, public policy, and work within government".