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Everyone remembers where they were when they found out about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

I was driving home from class as a junior engineering student at the University of Virginia. The class was motion biomechanics, and the professor was Dr. Kevin Granata. He exuded a passion for his work like few people I had ever met before and was unsurprisingly a rising star in his field.

His star would continue to rise as a trailblazer in the field of motion dynamics, lighting the paths of countless other scholars. His studies of biomechanics carried with them a charge to restore normal movement to those, particularly children, with cerebral palsy. The 5,000 infants and toddlers diagnosed yearly with the disease have lost a champion, because Granata was one of the many shot and killed at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

It’s hard to process such senseless violence and even harder when such a grave act is accompanied by a familiar face. I regret that when I was a student of Granata, there were a lot of things more important in my life, and I was far from matching the energy and passion he possessed for his field.

Like many other students, Sept. 11 evoked an academic malaise that would cause my worst semester in college. Granata managed to tactfully prod our class away from waning effort by emphasizing the importance of our studies, which had to come natural to someone as dedicated as he.

Students often complain about professors for being too demanding, unresponsive to their needs or more interested in research than teaching. In actuality, like Granata, most professors are far more dedicated to their discipline and students than is realized.

Much of Granata’s time was spent in pursuit of professional excellence. At UVA, he was director of the Motion Analysis Laboratory at the Kluge Children’s Rehabilitation Laboratory. There, Granata and his colleagues used sophisticated equipment to determine the causes and potential treatments for children with motor problems from a variety of affliction, be it spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy or others.

He would continue his research at the Virginia Tech Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Laboratory, where his talents were focused on neuromuscular control of a variety of everyday human activities, such as balance, lifting, and walking. In studying such mechanisms, biomechanics hope to solve problems that may occur in life preventing normal movement in patients.

Granata was known to be a dedicated father, with three children, Alex, 13, Eric, 12, and Ellen, 11. He managed to find the time to coach their sports teams and extracurricular activities. His colleagues have made comment of how when recounting stories of his family, a lightness encroached upon his demeanor that was somewhat foreign to the intensely dedicated researcher and professor.

However, Granata’s students were nearly as important to him as his own family. He was known for taking on an abnormally large number of students to mentor for graduate study.

He would prove his love of students in his last moments. Upon hearing gunfire on the second floor, Granata left his third floor office to usher scared students from an adjacent classroom into it.

Then, fearing that other students may still be in jeopardy, he left to investigate the disturbance. It was then, apparently, that the shooter spotted Granata and killed him.

All of the students Granata corralled were unharmed. If only the same could be said for his family and the beneficiaries of his research who will have to wait for another hero to come around.

Tim Robertson is graduate student in the Department of Political Science. E-mail him at trobertson@louisvillecardinal.com.