Emily Y. K. Chan

I am a researcher in the HEAD Lab at the Imperial College London, where I have been working since November 2022.

My research sits at the intersection of brain science, sports science, and engineering, with a particular interest in understanding and preventing traumatic brain injury (TBI) in sport. My PhD research was funded by Sports and Wellbeing Analytics (SWA).

I enjoy working on research that connects science with the real world, including collaborations with organisations such as World Rugby and Premiership Rugby to help make sport safer. I am especially interested in how engineering and technology can turn scientific discoveries into practical solutions.

Also proudly a cat mom to 🐱 Cream.

news

Sep 04, 2026	I successfully passed my PhD viva today! More about this
Apr 30, 2026	Short communication about subject-specific brain strain prediction accepted for IRCOBI 2026.
Apr 15, 2026	Our work on comparing brain injury metrics across sports has been accepted for presentation at ISBS 2026 at Loughborough University.
Feb 26, 2026	Multiple abstracts accepted at WCB 2026!
Feb 24, 2026	I gave a talk at the Sports Engineering Seminar Day at Heriot-Watt University, where I shared our recent work in sports biomechanics.

selected publications

medRxiv

Choosing Brain Injury Metrics for Sports HIA: A Multi-Sport Strain Evaluation Study

E. Y. K. Chan, E. Koumantou, L. Low, and 6 more authors

medRxiv, 2026

DOI Bib

@article{chan2026braininjurymetrics,
  author = {Chan, E. Y. K. and Koumantou, E. and Low, L. and Siy, I. and Jones, C. M. and Austin, K. and Loosemore, M. and McDonald, S. J. and Ghajari, M.},
  title = {Choosing Brain Injury Metrics for Sports HIA: A Multi-Sport Strain Evaluation Study},
  journal = {medRxiv},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.64898/2026.06.30.26356946},
}

bioRxiv

PARS: an automated, open-source pipeline for subject-specific finite element head modelling from MRI

V. Darvishi, E. Y. K. Chan, H. Duckworth, and 3 more authors

bioRxiv, 2026

DOI Bib

@article{darvishi2026pars,
  title = {PARS: an automated, open-source pipeline for subject-specific finite element head modelling from MRI},
  author = {Darvishi, V. and Chan, E. Y. K. and Duckworth, H. and Parker, T. D. and Sharp, D. J. and Ghajari, M.},
  journal = {bioRxiv},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.64898/2026.07.05.736584},
}

medRxiv

Integrating mouthguard kinematics, finite element brain strain, and plasma biomarkers to explore brain injury thresholds in collision sport

J. W. Hickey, E. Y. K. Chan, L. J. Evans, and 14 more authors

medRxiv, 2026

DOI Bib

@article{hickey2026integrating,
  title = {Integrating mouthguard kinematics, finite element brain strain, and plasma biomarkers to explore brain injury thresholds in collision sport},
  author = {Hickey, J. W. and Chan, E. Y. K. and Evans, L. J. and O'Brien, W. T. and Xie, B. and Roberts, S. S. H. and Butler, S. E. and Ernest, J. and Zhou, W. J. Q. and Zimmerman, K. A. and Spitz, G. and Parker, T. D. and O'Brien, T. J. and Shultz, S. R. and Sharp, D. J. and Ghajari, M. and McDonald, S. J.},
  journal = {medRxiv},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.64898/2026.08.26.26360869},
}

EAAI

Balancing efficiency and accuracy: Extreme gradient boosting and neural networks for near real-time brain deformation prediction in sports collisions

E. Y. K. Chan, X. Yu, C. Qin, and 1 more author

Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 2025

DOI Bib

@article{chan2025balancing,
  title = {Balancing efficiency and accuracy: Extreme gradient boosting and neural networks for near real-time brain deformation prediction in sports collisions},
  author = {Chan, E. Y. K. and Yu, X. and Qin, C. and Ghajari, M.},
  journal = {Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence},
  volume = {162},
  pages = {112489},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1016/j.engappai.2025.112489},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
}