Author: Admin

3 Pilot Grants Funded by Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

Our lab is proud to announce the funding of three new pilot grants authored by three of our Ph.D. students. Congratulations to Monika Buczak (Biomedical Engineering), Marshall Trout (Electrical Engineering), and Connor Olsen (Electrical Engineering). Each has been awarded ~$5,000 by the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation to help fund their research!

Monika’s Grant, entitled “Electronic Grip Gauge (EGG): Disentangling Sensory and Motor Deficits of Fine Hand Function,” will fund the development and translation of the EGG, an assessment tool to measure grip and dexterity. The EGG is currently used to assess the dexterity of prosthetic control in a research setting, and Monika hopes to translate the egg into the clinical sphere to assist with the rehabilitation of individuals who have suffered strokes.

Marshall’s Grant, entitled “Assisting and Rehabilitating Hand Dexterity for Stroke Patients through Proximal Nerve Stimulation,” uses functional electrical stimulation to reanimate stroke patients’ paretic limbs to assist in rehabilitation. Marshall’s work will operate similarly to mirror therapy but by actually moving the patient’s paretic limb through electrical stimulation of the proximal nerve.

Connor’s Grant, entitled “Enhancing Patient Independence with Hand Gesture Control of Inpatient Smart Rooms,” will fund the development of an EMG controller that will allow individuals to control their smart home environment using hand gestures. Connor seeks to enable the patients at the Nielsen Rehabilitation Hospital to use this control method in their hospital rooms to increase independence and promote recovery.

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Connor Olsen Awarded Grant to Enhance Research Mentorship

Connor Olsen has been awarded the Enhancing Research Mentorship Grant from the Office of Undergraduate Research at the University of Utah. This is the first (pilot) year this grant has been awarded and aims to improve the mentorship experience between mentees and mentors in a research setting and improve the diversity among researchers.

Connor’s grant, titled “Skill-Focused Research Training Session for New Undergraduate Researchers,” seeks to improve the process of bringing undergraduates into the research sphere by focusing less on what tasks they can perform and instead on developing critical research skills, such as performing literary analyses, developing research questions, and analyzing experimental data. He hopes to use this grant to promote change away from undergraduates being assigned menial tasks in a research lab and build them into future researchers who can act independently and think critically.

Lab Demo for National Advisory Council

On October 14th, our lab joined up with the adaptive sports group at the Neilsen Rehabilitation Hospital to showcase our technology for the University of Utah National Advisory Council (NAC). The NAC is a group of approximately 130 individuals who work closely with the University’s leadership and administration to improve the relationships between the U and its constituencies throughout the state and beyond. NAC members saw the LUKE arm mimic their hand gestures and our low-cost upper-limb exoskeleton. They were all exceptionally pleased to see the work we do in our lab and were all very appreciative of the work we’re doing to improve the lifestyle of individuals with strokes and amputations.

Nathan Wallace (Undergraduate, BME) demonstrates his design for a low-cost exoskeleton, while Monika Buczak (Ph.D. Student, BME) explains the LUKE arm.
Nathan Wallace (Undergraduate, BME) demonstrates his design for a low-cost exoskeleton, while Monika Buczak (Ph.D. Student, BME) explains the LUKE arm.
MEC 2022 Student Podium Presentation Competition award winners: Connor Olsen (Left) First Place, and Monika Buczak (right) second place, with their professor Jacob A. George in the center

MEC Student Presentation Award Winners: Monika Buczak and Connor Olsen

 

Congratulations to Monika Buczak and Connor Olsen for their recent awards at the Myoelectric Controls Symposium (MEC) held in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The conference occurs every three years, and part of the conference includes the Student Podium Presentation Competition. This year, our lab walked away with both first and second place! Monika Buczak was awarded 2nd place for her presentation, Disentangling Sensory and Motor Deficits of Fine Hand Function Using An Electronic Grip Gauge (EGG) to Simulate Transferring Fragile Objects. Connor Olsen was awarded 1st place for his presentation, An Inexpensive and Adaptable Prosthetic Wrist Improves Dexterity and Reduces Compensatory Movements.

Our lab was well represented at MEC22, and we are immensely proud of all the presentations given. Find the conference proceedings here.

Myoelectric Controls Symposium 2022

The first in-person conference for our lab was a huge success! Our Lab had four podium presentations and two posters at the Myoelectric Controls Symposium (MEC) in New Brunswick, Canada. We took home both 1st and 2nd place student awards! We’re very proud of all our students and their hard work!

MEC is a mix of researchers, companies, patients, therapists, and clinicians dealing in upper-limb prosthetics, and it is always an enjoyable conference! Special thanks go to the University of New Brunswick (UNB) for hosting the conference!

Click here to view the conference proceedings

Caden Hamrick Summer Research

This summer, our lab hosted Caden Hamrick through the Summer Program for Undergraduate Research (SPUR). SPUR sponsors undergraduate students as full-time researchers for a 10-week program. Caden applied and was accepted to this program and completed his research through our lab. Caden was a dedicated worker and used his experience in deep learning to develop a control method to determine hand gestures and intensities from electromyographic muscle signals. Caden’s work contributes to the EMG wristband project that will be used for controlling smart devices around the home. Caden Presented his research at a University-wide symposium on August 4th.

Caden will be starting his senior year in Computer Engineering at Mercer University in Georgia this fall.

Utah Asia Campus Tour

On July 27th, our lab had the opportunity to host visiting students from the Utah Asia Campus (UAC), located in Incheon, South Korea. This year, the six students had more time to spend with our lab, which let us do more activities with them. We took them through a tour of the Nielsen Rehabilitation Hospital, presented a demo of our research projects, shared lunch with them, and helped them work on a mini project to use the electrical signals in the muscles to control a virtual prosthetic hand. They particularly enjoyed controlling each other’s arms with the exoskeleton and processing their own muscle signals at the forearm.

The students, all working on degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering, visited Utah for a week in preparation to return for their senior year. Our lab always enjoys hosting these students each year, and we are grateful for the chance to share our work with them!