First, my words can not adequately relate all that Kevin Granata has meant to people in this world. He was the model scientist, teacher, husband and father to 3 children ages 10-14 years. There has been a profusion of emails and calls from concerned people across the U.S. and Europe.

Kevin Granata was an extremely bright scientist who adopted the work ethic that he was raised with in Ohio to achieve great things in a life that should not have been this short. He received undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Ohio State in Engineering Physics then Biomedical Engineering respectively. After his post-doctoral work at Ohio State, he was recruited in 1997 by the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery of the University of Virginia to be the Research Director of the Motion Analysis and Motor Performance Laboratory. He held a joint appointment in Biomedical Engineering. He brought with him a federally funded grant to study trunk movement and the relationship to loads and back injury. While conducting this work, he focused his keen mind on expanding his research in human movement to understand how brain injury for children with cerebral palsy interfered with balance and movement. He worked with myself and Diane Damiano to understand ankle and knee coupling incerebral palsy and in determining ways to quantify threshold joint velocities during spastic gait. During his six years at UVA, he was extremely successful in attracting federal and other grant funds. He published extensively on movement dynamics, joint stability and relationship to injury as well as adaptations to spastic movement constraints. His successes in research and teaching quickly brought him tenure at UVA. He was an outstanding resource for graduate students in mechanics, bioengineering, sports medicine and orthopaedics. Dr. Granata's research vision was to develop a center to study the essence of human movement and how machines, braces and walking devices could be developed to overcome human disability. In 2003, he started the Musculoskeletal Biomechanics lab at Virginia Tech where he held the rank of Professor of Engineering Science & Mechanics. At Virginia Tech, Dr. Granata resumed work on walking stability and the influence of speed as well as the dynamics of body trunk stability.

Dr. Granata was recognized as a top notch scientist at the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech. His extremely logical and insightful approach made him a popular research collaborator. Indeed he fostered inter-institutional research with both UVA and several other universities across the country. He was a leader in the American Society of Biomechanics, the American Society of Mechanical Engineering, the Gait and Clinical Movement Society and Human Factors, and the Ergonomics Society. He was also associate editor of the Journal of Applied Biomechanics and the Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology. The world has lost a great contributor and our challenge is to think of the appropriate way to honor Kevin Granata.

Kevin Granata is my brother in law, and he was 45 years old. I want to share a little bit about the man I knew and his family. Husband, father of three beautiful children, a Son, an Uncle, a Godfather, and a friend to many. Even though I only had the opportunity to see Kevin and his family occasionally I came to know a very nice, and sincere man, and a man with a sly sense of humor. I will tell you about the sense of humor in a moment.

Trying to help his family through this is really tough. To see and be part of the grief and heartache of loosing a loved one in such a horrible way is more than anyone should have to take. My wife and I are in the middle of transferring from the Toledo Ohio area to South Bend Indiana. So I am back at work trying to keep appointments we have to find a new house, our current home is sold and the trucks are coming to pack us up Monday the 23rd. We will be homeless until we find something out here. We have our own young children to take care of and my wife is working and in Nursing Grad School. I have been working away from home for over a year. But all those things that seemed so important are now rendered meaningless because of the senseless act of one person.

That video shows Dr Granata very true to life, teaching others and loving what he did. Several people have asked how I knew him so I'll use the same simile I told them. In graduate school, your advisor is like your father. They fund your education, introduce you to the field, correct you when you make mistakes, and show you how to be an outstanding academian. For the rest of your life your work reflects on theirs and their work weighs on you. Dr. Granata was a brilliant and prolific young researcher whose hard work and ambition enabled dozens of students to pursue graduate degrees, and Monday we all lost a father.

I had the great fortune of having Kevin as my doctoral advisor while he was at the University of Virginia. With a background in sports medicine it was somewhat daunting to step into a biomedical engineering lab to do my doctoral work. Kevin had such energy and a vitality to answer questions through research that it was an amazing experience. If you had a question to answer, he would say "let's figure out a way to answer it", "let's build something", or "let's start playing around". It was a great atmosphere.

I only met Kevin two months ago. His work at Virgina Tech speaks for itself, but I didn't know him in that capacity. He was my 13-year-old son's lacrosse coach. And this is what struck me about him and made me realize he was a man who cared. His children didn't play on the team, nor had he ever played lacrosse in his life. He told me that he just saw the game, fell in love with it, and wanted kids in our community to have a chance to play. So besides his work at Tech and his devotion to his family, he somehow made time to coach kids that weren't even his own several times a week. What more needs to be said? That's the kind of man he was, and though I didn't know him well, I wish I had. He, like all the rest, will be deeply missed. He was a man making a difference.

We met at a small workshop in Germany in February. Kevin was a very nice person and good friend to everyone. Just terrible to see that he got killed in random shooting by some lunitic. I wish his family strength and I really hope that they are beeing taken good care of.