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Josh Gubler and Sam Lewis Receive UROP Fellowships for Summer 2023

Congratulations to Josh Gubler and Sam Lewis, who have been awarded UROP Fellowships for the Summer 2023 semester. The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) allows students to assist with faculty research or to carry out their projects under the guidance of a faculty member.

Josh’s project will focus on the compression of EMG for mobile use while also examining the impact of downsampling EMG signals on signal controllability. Sam’s project will investigate the effects of different-sized dry surface electrodes on the quality of EMG signals measured at the wrist.

The UROP Fellowship provides a $1,200 stipend and educational programming for students, allowing them to gain valuable research experience while receiving financial support. We are thrilled to see Josh and Sam receive this well-deserved recognition for their dedication and hard work. We wish them all the best as they embark on their research projects this summer, and we look forward to seeing the results of their work in the future. Congratulations, Josh and Sam!

Research Featured in National Geographic Cover Story

Research from Dr. George, in collaboration with Dr. Clark, was recently featured in June Cover Story of National Geographic. The cover story, titled, "The Power of Touch," highlights several ongoing research studies that seek to restore the sense of touch to individuals who have lost it. The U's research on the "LUKE Arm" is among the research studies featured. An excerpt from the article is listed below:

..."I just wanted to see if I could pay it forward," said Keven Walgamott, a Utah real estate agent who lost parts of his right arm and foot two decades ago after a power line sparked while he was lifting a pump out of a well outside his home.

Starting in 2016, Walgamott spent more than a year as a research volunteer at the University of Utah, where he was temporarily implanted with electrodes, including some developed by scientists there. Inside their lab, wired into a computer, Walgamott would put on one of the new sensorized prostheses--this one named the LUKE, for Life Under Kinetic Evolution but also for Luke Skywalker, the Star Wars Jedi who loses his hand in a light-saber fight with Darth Vader. By the end of The Empire Strikes Back, Luke has a prosthetic that can apparently do everything, including feel. If you enter "Walgamott eggs" or "Walgamott grapes" into a search engine, you'll see him in a Utah lab with the LUKE: Concentrating, his face sober, he's performing the kind of simple tasks that are almost impossible for hands that can't feel.

He lifts a raw egg in its shell, with just the right delicacy, and sets it gently into a bowl. He holds a grape cluster with his actual hand, closes a prosthetic thumb and finger around a single grape, and pulls it off without squashing it...