Gears of Progress Sasha Portnova

Benjamin Conner (Google Scholar, LinkedIn) got an MD/PhD in clinical translational sciences from University of Arizona, shares his journey from studying biology and anthropology to biomechanics and exoskeleton implementation. He discusses the importance of mentors and the impact of movement as medicine. Ben explains the role of an MD/PhD in bridging the gap between basic science research and clinical care. He highlights the challenges of the translational valley of death and the disconnect between research priorities and patient needs. Ben also provides an overview of his PhD work on using an exoskeleton device as a training system for children with cerebral palsy. During his PhD, Ben also designed No Limits mobile app, a resource for paraplegic and quadriplegic athletes.



This episode was powered by: 


Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences (CREATE) at the University of Washington


Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA)

Rita Stanely (LinkedIn) is a long-time advocate for making assistive technology more accessible. She has worked in and around the policy-making world for several decades and dedicated her life understanding how science can influence policy. In this episode, we have covered the topics of policy making in the spaces of rehab engineering and assistive tech, what researchers in AT should know about reimbursement codes and policy when developing new tech to ensure its accessible to the intended population, and how our government's view has changed about the importance of providing rehab and assistive tech in the last 20 years.



This episode was powered by: 


Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences (CREATE) at the University of Washington 


Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA)

Ben Schouten (Google Scholar, personal webpage) is a proffessor of Playful Interactions in Smart Environments at
Eindhoven University of Technology and a lector of Play & Civic Media Research at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. His work focuses on play and design for social innovations, citizen empowerment, and culture as well as toy development for the purpose of rehabilitation.

In this episode, Ben and I covered what serious games are, his work in incorporating playful interactions in medical settings, the powerful use of mixed-reality games to "step into someone's shoes", and the importance of participatory design.

Links to some of his work:

Assessing Children’s Fine Motor Skills With Sensor-Augmented Toys: Machine Learning Approach (link)

Magic Monster (link)

Mixed-Reality Work (link)

Participative societies creating new challenges for the water sector (link)

Sept 2016 "Games and Playful Interaction" talk (link)

Spero Koulouras is a computer engineer by training and an entrepreneur by heart. One of his latest ventures is Auli.Tech, a company that designs open-source applications and devices enabling individuals to overcome intramuscular and vocal impairments.

In this episode, Spero discusses his journey in the tech industry and his experience with ALS diagnosis 5 years ago, which got him on the path of developing assistive technologies like Cato. Cato is a small device that uses motion recognition and AI to enable control of things such as computer mouse, keyboard, game controller, and even a harness.



**If you're a qualified Assistive Tech professional interested in giving Cato a try for FREE, please fill out this form **



The accessible transcript of this episode is available here.

Nataliya Rokhmanova (Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Scholar) is a PhD student in the joint program between Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Germany and Carnegie Mellon University in the US. In this episode, we discussed the role of haptics, specifically vibro-tactile feedback, in helping humans improve the way they walk, the benefits of participating in an international PhD program, and her incredible work teaching researchers how to make their scientific figures more readable, engaging, and appealing to improve science communication.

Resources:


SciFig repository for the workshop on explaining scientific findings through figures in publications, presentations, and posters - link
Paper "Comparing preference of ankle–foot stiffness in below-knee amputees and prosthetists" - link
Paper "Remotely delivered, individualized, and self-directed gait modification for knee osteoarthritis: A pilot trial" - link
DAAD scholarships aimed primarily at graduates, doctoral students and and are awarded for study and research visits to universities and non-university research institutions in Germany - link

Dr. Alyssa Spomer (LinkedIn, Google Scholar) got her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington. Her work focused on biofeedback technology to improve motor control in children with cerebral palsy and worked on understanding how interpretable machine learning methods can be used to identify factors of response to a resistive ankle exoskeleton (Biomotum).

In this episode, we discussed what it takes to write a winning NSF Graduate Research Fellowship application, how common emulation of disabled gait patterns are in rehab engineering research, and how different doing science in a hospital in comparison to academia.