Squish-squish! Nadine Lippa, a University of Southern Mississippi (USM) fifth-year sports and high-performance materials doctoral student, gets help from UAH Reliability and Failure Analysis Laboratory staff research engineer Greg Doud testing a sole segment from an Asics Gel Kayano 19 running shoe on a Bose Electroforce 3330. She's studying how the sole polymers degrade as runners use the shoe. Formerly owned by USM, the machine was used by Lippa there. She found she had more to do for her dissertation work on an athletic shoe lifespan assessment protocol after USM had shipped the machine to new owner UAH. Doud says he's learning from Lippa's experience with the machine. "I'm studying how much energy is managed by the shoe and how much goes into the runner's body and can possibly cause injury," she says, giving kudos to the RFAL for its collaboration. "They've been really awesome and accommodating."