Welcome to the Brodland Commons

About the Commons

This website gives you access to resources that my team and I developed over the 32 years that I was a professor of engineering at the University of Waterloo.

We carried out fundamental research on the mechanics of biological cells, and our goal was to understand how and why cells move during embryogenesis and cancer metastasis. Here, you can read about some of our challenges and discoveries and find links to our scientific papers.

One of our favorite discoveries is a new technique that makes it possible to infer the forces in cells from their geometry. We made a short video to describe how this novel technique works, and we wrote some sample software that you can download.

We also developed resources to help students learn about various engineering structures. These resources include a series of 10 professionally-animated YouTube videos about beams, and a collection of physical models and associated videos about structures. We posted any drawings, 3D printing files and classroom instructions we had available in case you should wish to make copies of our models.

Youtube Videos

Engineering Models - Dome
Bending Moment (Elastic Case)
Calculating Variance: The Mystery of n-1

Models That Explain How Structures Work