Engineering to enhance human mobility, play, and exploration
Congratulations to Dr. Michael Rosenberg on earning his Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering! Dr. Rosenberg’s PhD thesis dissertation was titled Modeling and predicting subject-specific response to ankle exoskeletons. Congratulations and the best of luck as you move forward at Emory University.
The College of Engineering Awards acknowledges the extraordinary efforts of the college’s teaching and research assistants, staff, and faculty members. Momona Yamagami was selected for the 2021 Student Research Award. Congratulations Momona!
Momona Yamagami is an innovative researcher who focuses on developing novel accessible technologies with translational impact. In her first year, she helped build an interdisciplinary research program that blended neuroengineering, human-computer interaction and rehabilitation at the Amplifying Motion and Performance (AMP) Lab to evaluate and mitigate symptoms of Parkinson’s disease using virtual reality. Dedicated to building accessible and inclusive technology, she is working to apply control theory and artificial intelligence to improve device accessibility for people with and without limited motion.
“Momona is a truly exceptional student with a demonstrated history of leadership in research and education. We cannot wait to see where Momona steers her career trajectory and research contributions.”
BOOM! Kat Steele was recently a guest speaker on the fantastic podcast BOOM: Biomechanics On Our Minds hosted by Melissa Boswell and Hannah O’Day. Kat joined BOOM for their first episode of a four-part series discussing mobility, accessibility, and design.
Definitely give this episode a listen on SoundCloud, Spotify, or Apple Podcast, and follow along with the rest of the four-part series and all great BOOM content on the same podcast services.
boom. Boom. BOOM!
A second NSF Convergence Accelerator focused on increasing access and inclusion. The LIBERATE workshop is focused on Living Better through Rehabilitation & Assistive Technology.
As an NSF Convergence Accelerator, participants will seek to identify pathways that could be pursued by multidisciplinary teams to get solutions at least to a prototype stage in 3-5 years. The long-term goal from this workshop is to kickstart the next wave of technologies that will empower people with disabilities.
Dr. Steele will be participating and presenting some kernels of ideas for inclusion, especially highlighting recent work from CREATE.
Email Dr. Steele (kmsteele – at – uw – dot – edu) with questions, comments, or suggestions.
Journal Article in Applied System Innovation:
This work highlights the potential of wearable technologoies to monitor muscle activity changes during stroke recovery in acute clinical settings and their importance for motivation and understanding of progression from the survivor’s point of view: ‘I was hopeful that it would show signs of things that are occurring when I couldn’t physically feel it…if you had other scientific evidence that things were happening, even beyond their notion that it would, it gives you a lot of hope. You just have to be patient, and it’s harder to take when someone tells you, but easier to understand if someone actually shows you’.
Aim: Describe the use of wireless sEMG sensors to examine changes in muscle activity during acute and subacute phases of stroke recovery, and understand the participant’s perceptions of sEMG monitoring.
Method: Muscle activity was tracked by five wireless sEMG sensors beginning three days post-stroke and continued through discharge from inpatient rehabilitation. Activity logs were completed each session, and a semi-structured interview occurred at the final session with three- and eight-month follow-up sessions.
Results: The longitudinal monitoring of muscle and movement recovery in the clinic and community was feasible using sEMG sensors. The participant and medical team felt monitoring was unobtrusive, interesting, and motivating for recovery, but desired greater in-session feedback to inform rehabilitation.
Interpretation: This work highlights that barriers in equipment and signal quality still exist, but capitalizing on wearable sensing technology in the clinic holds promise for enabling personalized stroke recovery.