WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- The Virginia Tech shootings hit close to home for some people at Wake Forest University yesterday.

Kevin P. Granata, an engineering science and mechanics professor at Virginia Tech, was among the dead. Granata was on the faculty of the joint Wake Forest School of Medicine and Virginia Tech biomedical engineering program.

Granata's research interests were muscle and reflex response and robotics, including control of lower back pain and computer simulation of walking and running.

Granata's office was in Norris Hall, where most of the shootings occurred.

Ishwar K. Puri, the head of the engineering science and mechanics department at Virginia Tech, called Granata one of the top five biomechanics researchers in the country working on movement dynamics in cerebral palsy.

Virginia Tech engineering professor Demetri P. Telionis said Granata was successful but also kind.

"With so many research projects and graduate students, he still found time to spend with his family, and he coached his children in many sports and extracurricular activities," Telionis said. "He was a wonderful family man. We will all miss him dearly."

Granata was a gifted scientist, known worldwide for his research into how the body's various muscles accomplish complicated movements, said Stefan Duma, a Virginia Tech mechanical engineering professor.

"He liked to ask the big questions," Duma said. "When we had students defending their Ph.D., and he kept asking, 'Did we have the total solution?' He was really interested in whether we answered the big questions. That's really a sign of a great scientist."

-- Laura Giovanelli, Winston-Salem Journal, and The Associated Press