Fjola Johannesdottir, PhD

Fjola Johannesdottir, PhD, is a Principal Investigator at the Center for Advanced Orthopaedic Studies (CAOS), Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and an Assistant Professor in Orthopedic Surgery at Harvard Medical School, Boston. Dr. Johannesdottir received her MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Iceland, and her key research skills are bone mechanics, CT-based imaging, and statistics. For her PhD work, she used 3D musculoskeletal imaging to study the determinants of osteoporotic fragility among elderly people, especially hip fractures, and to assess age-related changes by examining bone structure and shape. She then did a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Ken Poole at the University of Cambridge UK, where she expanded her imaging and statistical skills by using parametric mapping of femoral bone in patients with and without hip fractures and by using MRI images to assess bone health among Gaucher patients. In 2016, she joined the Bouxsein lab and became a faculty member in July 2018.

Dr. Johannesdottir’s research focuses on assessing bone and muscle quality using advanced non-invasive imaging techniques to understand skeletal changes associated with aging and disease. She employs cutting-edge imaging and statistical algorithms to identify the mechanisms behind these changes and how they affect bone strength and fracture risk.

Dr. Johannesdottir is an active member of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research and an Associate Editor of JBMR Plus. She currently serves on the ASBMR development committee and is the President of the Quantitative Musculoskeletal Imaging (QMSKI) workshop.