![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/635847487692667308-mar-gceitf-infantry10jpg.jpg\")
Lance Cpl. Callahan Brown talks with a fellow Marine with the Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force after an infantry assessment at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, Calif. Following the defense secretary’s announcement that all military jobs will be opened to women, Brown, an Infantry Training Battalion graduate, said she hopes to make a lateral move into an infantry rifleman position.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Photo Credit: Mike Morones\/Staff<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n “We say, ‘OK, we’re going to model a guy just like you inside a computer,’ ” Abdel-Malek said. “We say: ‘We’re going to load\u00a0you up with 80 pounds on your back with a helmet and a whole bunch of gear; we want you to do the following tasks.’ \u00a0I want the software to tell me whether you, particularly, will be injured or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We’ll come back and say: \u2026 ‘We want him to do the following strength and conditioning periodization in order to improve his health, his muscular strength and so on in order to reduce the injury substantially.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n The project is being conducted as the Marine Corps is set to allow women into military occupational specialties that had been restricted to men only. A Marine Corps gender integration study found that female Marines carrying heavy loads are more likely to be injured than their male counterparts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the University of Iowa project is not tied to the Marine Corps’ gender integration efforts, the results may be used in the future as women join load-bearing MOSs, said Capt. Philip Kulczewski, a Marine Corps spokesman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A University of Iowa project is seeking to develop software to predict when Marines will be injured and what strength and conditioning they need to do to avoid getting hurt, said Karim Abdel-Malek, a professor at the university\u2019s college of engineeri<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":34149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":69,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[12,69],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1187],"class_list":["post-15134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-your-marine-corps"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"P7TMPEKEXFCFNKBKUTGDUF2SSY","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-marine-corps\/2016\/02\/24\/virtual-grunts-to-help-prevent-injuries-on-real-marines\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n