Influence of lateral stabilization on walking ability post-stroke
Funding Agency: National Institutes of Health (NICHD)
Project Description: The overall goal of this project is to better understand how mediolateral balance control mechanisms are impaired and compensated for post-stroke to motivate more targeted interventions that improve balance control.
Collaborators: Dr. Jesse Dean and Dr. Christain Finetto at the Medical University of South Carolina.
Effect of prosthetic foot-ankle stiffness on amputee function
Funding Agency: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
Project Description: The overall goal of this project is to identify causal relationships between prosthetic foot-ankle stiffness and amputee gait mechanics and develop a predictive prescription tool to improve rehabilitation outcomes.
Collaborators: Dr. Glenn Klute at the VA RR&D Center for Limb Loss Prevention & Prosthetic Engineering.
Mechanically-induced stochastic resonance to improve amputee gait
Funding Agency: The Veterans Affairs (VA)
Project Description: The purpose of this research is to determine if mechanically-induced stochastic resonance, applied to the residual limb of a diabetic lower limb amputee or the plantar surface of their intact foot, can enhance peripheral sensation sufficiently to result in improved postural stability and gait.
Collaborators: Dr. Glenn Klute at the VA RR&D Center for Limb Loss Prevention & Prosthetic Engineering; Gordon Bosker, Gail Walden and Jim Schroeder at the Andrew J. Gitter Research Center South Texas VA Medical Center.
Intermuscular coordination of hemiparetic walking
Funding Agency: National Institutes of Health (NICHD)
Project Description: The goal of this project is to investigate how impaired muscle force production limits walking speed in hemiparetic patients, with the goal to design effective rehabilitation interventions.
Collaborators: Dr. Steve Kautz at the Medical University of South Carolina; Dr. Felix Zajac at Stanford University.
Optimization of dynamic ankle-foot orthosis design
Funding Agency: Center for Rehabilitation Sciences Research (CRSR)
Project Description: The overall goal of this project is to develop a scientific basis for prescribing and manufacturing ankle-foot orthoses (AFOs) with an appropriate stiffness level for individual subjects. Additive manufacturing techniques (SLS) are used to fabricate AFOs with varying design characteristics that are tested over a wide range of mobility tasks.
Collaborators: Dr. Jason Wilken at the Military Performance Lab, Center for the Intrepid, Fort Sam Houston, TX.
Development of a SimTK-based framework hemiparetic walking assessment
Funding Agency: National Institutes of Health (NINDS)
Project Description: The primary goal of this project is to collaborate with the Simbios NIH Center for Biomedical Computation to i) establish a theoretical framework for predicting and quantifying the dominant underlying motor impairments from spatiotemporal characteristics of post-stroke hemiparetic walking; and ii) leverage our existing research program on hemiparetic gait to provide an effective driving biological problem to test and enhance the computational algorithms being developed at the center.
Collaborators: Dr. Steve Kautz at the Medical University of South Carolina; Dr. Felix Zajac at Stanford University.
Neuromotor adaptations in transtibial amputee gait
Funding Agency: CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF)
Project Description: The goal of this project is to investigate the neuromotor adaptations used by successful transtibial amputees and the interactions with limb-loading and prosthetic design characteristics. The project goal is to understand these interactions and design and manufacture prosthetic ankle-foot components to reduce the debilitating limb loading experienced by transtibial amputees.
Collaborators: Gordon Bosker and Gail Walden at the Andrew J. Gitter Research Center South Texas VA Medical Center.
Wheelchair propulsion technique
Funding Agency: National Institutes of Health (NICHD)
Project Description: The goal of this project is to using computer modeling and simulation to develop a scientific basis for improving wheelchair propulsion technique that reduces demand placed on the wheelchair user.
Collaborators: Dr. Mark Richter at Max Mobility.
How walking speed influences muscle contributions to forward progression: implications for functional mobility in the elderly
Funding Agency: The Whitaker Foundation
Project Description: The goal of this project is to investigate how walking speed influences muscle contributions to forward progression, with a special emphasis on how deficits in various musculoskeletal properties impair walking performance in the elderly.
Collaborators: Dr. Ton van den Bogert, Cleveland Clinic Foundation; Dr. Steve Kautz, University of Florida and the Malcom Randall VA Medical Center
Induced acceleration analysis for rehabilitation
Funding Agency: The National Institutes of Health (SBIR grant to C-Motion, Inc)
Project Description: The purpose of this project was to develop models and analysis techniques for Visual3D to analyze human movement.
Collaborators: Dr. Scott Selbie at C-Motion; Tom Kepple at NIH; Dr. Kotaro Sasaki at UT Austin.
Biomechanical implant wear mechanisms during human locomotion
Funding Agency: The Whitaker Foundation and the Charles W. Tate & Judy Spence Tate Charitable Foundation
Project Description: The goal of this project is to integrate forward dynamic simulations with a detailed contact model to help identify orthopedic implant wear mechanisms during human locomotion.
Collaborators: Dr. Mike Bryant at UT Austin, Dr. Catherine Ambrose at the UT Health Science Center-Houston and Dr. Charles Layne at the University of Houston.
A theoretical analysis of chainring shape to improve cycling performance
Project Description: This project integrated a detailed musculoskeletal model and forward dynamics pedaling simulation and design optimization to determine the optimal chainring shape that improves maximal power output relative to a conventional circular chainring at different pedaling rates.
Biomechanical response of prosthetic feet in transtibial amputees
Funding Agency: The Veterans Affairs (VA)
Project Description: The goal of this project is to investigate the influence of design characteristics of prosthetic feet on gait performance of transtibial amputees. This study will provide important empirical data on which to evaluate our theoretical modeling and simulation studies, with the goal to identify the appropriate prosthetic characteristics for a given amputee and provide objective criteria for the prescription and use of prosthetic devices.
Collaborators: Gordon Bosker and Gail Walden at the Andrew J. Gitter Research Center South Texas VA Medical Center.