Undergraduate student Lyndsey Schultz was awarded second place overall for her poster at the University of Utah’s BME Senior Symposium on April 19, 2024. Her poster is titled “Design of Lower-Limb Muscle Activity Monitoring Sock Using Surface Electrodes.” Congratulations Lyndsey!
Congratulations to Nathan Wallace, who took home the grand prize at the Bench To Beside competition!
Congrats also to Michael Adkins, Monika Buczak, and Nate Toth for winning the “Best in Engineering” Award. They won $5,000 for their work on the Electronic Grip Gauge. Michael and Monika were student ambassadors for the University of Utah ECE and BME departments, respectively.
The Utah Neurorobotics Lab welcomes Caden Hamrick, who will be joining us this Fall as a PhD student in ECE. Although he will be a new PhD student, he brings with him a wealth of knowledge and experience. Caden worked with our lab as an undergraduate research fellow during the Summer of 2022, and was recently awarded the NSF GRFP. For his PhD research, Caden will be working on EMG decoding for human-computer interaction.
Welcome Caden!
Dr. Jacob George and his Utah Neurorobotics Lab was recently awarded the Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award. Thank you to all the fabulous undergraduate researchers in our group whose collective achievements made this award possible. We’ve had 42 undergrad fellows in the lab, who have collectively achieved 31 co-authored abstracts, 21 first-author abstracts, 18 co-authored manuscripts, 5 first-author manuscripts, and 57 competitive research fellowships, totaling $385,299.
A special thanks also to all of the graduate student mentors, who provide the critical day-to-day mentorship and training for our undergrads; this award really wouldn’t be possible without them. It’s great to see our lab working together to create a pipeline from K-12 outreach, to high school interns, undergraduate researchers, and graduate students. Thank you all for your many contributions to our research and team.
Congratulations to Michael Adkins for completing the NSF I-Corps Entrepreneurial Training Program!
Through this program, Michael was awarded $50,000 for customer discovery to explore the commercial viability of his Electronic Grip Gauge (EGG). Over the past month, Michael interviewed over 100 stakeholders (therapists, patients, clinic directors, etc.) to come up with a concise value proposition for a beachhead customer. In other words, he found the problems worth solving, the solutions worth paying for, and the most likely first adopters. As a result of Michael’s hard work, we formed a start-up company and are now competing for seed funding through Bench2Bedside and an NIH STTR grant.
Abby Citterman, a member of the NeuroRobotics Lab since 2020, a recent graduate of Biomedical Engineering at the U, and a graduate student at Northwestern University Prosthetics-Orthotics Center, attended the 50th Academy Annual Meeting & Scientific Symposium last week with the American Academy of Orthotists & Prosthetists. There, she was awarded the Women in O&P Research Award, sponsored by Össur, along with a $1,500 honorarium, for her research titled Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation at the Wrist as a Method to Restore Sensory Feedback for Individuals with Partial Hand Amputation. Abby was also awarded first place in the poster competition for her capstone research project at Northwestern University, titled Do Clinical Assessments of Upper-Limb Prosthesis Users Sufficiently Capture All Dimensions of Anatomical Hand Function?
Congratulations Abby for these prestigious awards!
Abby Citterman, a dedicated member of the NeuroRobotics Lab since 2020, a recent graduate of biomedical engineering at the U, and a graduate student at Northwestern University Prosthetics-Orthotics Center, has been awarded the prestigious ABC O&P Scholarship, a $10,000 scholarship granted by the American Board for Certification in Orthotics, Prosthetics & Pedorthics (ABC) and the Orthotics & Prosthetics Foundation for Education and Research (OPERF).
The ABC O&P Scholarship is awarded annually to exemplary students who demonstrate outstanding academic achievements, leadership potential, and a commitment to advancing the field of orthotics and prosthetics. This esteemed scholarship aims to support the education and professional development of promising individuals in O&P.
Abby has embodied these characteristics and more through her work in the Utah NeuroRobotics Lab, leading numerous projects, mentoring several new undergraduate and high school students, and receiving recognition for her research at national and international conferences. As we look towards the future, we are confident that Abby’s contributions will continue to shape the field and inspire others in the pursuit of groundbreaking advancements in healthcare technology. Congratulations, Abby, on this well-deserved recognition, and may your journey be filled with continued success and impact!
For more information about the 2024 ABC O&P Scholarship, please visit www.oandpfoundation.org.
University of Utah President, Taylor Randall, highlighted the Utah NeuroRobotics Lab multiple times during his recent presentations to the Utah State Legislature. The Utah NeuroRobotics Lab was recognized as a driving force of innovation at the University of Utah, pioneering new technologies that can lead to substantial economic growth in Utah. Slides from the talk highlighting the Utah NeuroRobotics Lab are shown below. Read more about President Randall's vision on the future of higher education and research in the state of Utah, or watch the full presentation.
