Kim Farrell, senior application developer and senior team leader at the Virtual Soldier Research program in the UI Center for Computer-Aided Design (CCAD), has received

Best Paper Award, 2nd Place, for her presentation of the paper, "Body-Based Obstacle Avoidance for Motion Simulation using Optimization-Based Posture Prediction," June 15-17 at the International Digital Human Modeling (DHM2016) Symposium in Montreal, Canada.

The paper was co-authored with Engineering alumnus Rich Degenhardt, III (BSE 2011 electrical engineering, MS 2014 electrical and computer engineering), animation UI programmer at Rockstar Games; Rajan Bhatt, assistant director, Virtual Soldier Research; Jasbir Arora, F. Wendell Miller Professor, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and associate director of CCAD; and Karim Abdel-Malek, professor of biomedical engineering and director of the Virtual Soldier Research program at the Center for Computer-Aided Design.

Farrell earned her BS degree in 2002 in computer science and mathematics (graduating with Highest Distinction) and an MS degree in 2005 in mechanical engineering, both from the University of Iowa.

At CCAD, she led architecture and development of the GruntSim™/ETOWL software – a human simulation tool specifically designed to analyze load carriage by military personnel.