Biography
Rachel Lance is an author and PhD biomedical engineer, specializing in trauma and survival in extreme environments. She is passionate about writing because it lets her share her love of finding the answers to complex riddles.
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Rachel Lance refuses to stop taking things apart. She made the designation of “engineer” official when she earned BS and MS degrees in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan, then later a PhD in the same from Duke University. She specializes in injury biomechanics, which is the use of the concepts of engineering to analyze injuries and traumas, and she’s fascinated by blast and ballistic events as well as the physiology of underwater survival.
Lance began her career as a mechanical engineer for the US Navy, where she worked for almost nine years designing underwater equipment such as breathing systems for US military personnel. She then spent five years as scientific research faculty at the Duke University School of Medicine, where she continued to focus on questions affecting military personnel out of the hyperbaric chambers of the Duke University Center for Hyperbaric Medicine & Environmental Physiology. Her scientific focus has been on both understanding how the human body responds when it goes places it shouldn’t, like underwater or in front of a bomb, and also developing novel methods to enable survival. She now conducts similar scientific work part-time as an independent consultant in addition to writing.
A native of suburban Detroit, Michigan, Dr. Lance lives with her two pushy mutts in Durham, North Carolina. She enjoys cycling, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, scuba diving, and baking. She is passionate about art, animals, the throaty rumble of a big-block Chevy engine, and properly designed O-ring seals.
