News

PhD Candidate Kari Loverro Receives Dudley Allen Sargent Research Fund Award

Our PhD candidate, Kari Loverro, has recently been awarded funding through the Dudley Allen Sargent Research Fund (DASRF) to support her dissertation. Congratulations, Kari!

Congrats to HAL’s Class of 2017 Graduates

Congratulations to the following members of HAL on their recent graduation and accomplishments!

Anne Khuu (right) received her PhD degree in Rehabilitation Sciences from Sargent College with a concentration in Human Movement & Adaptation. She successfully defended her dissertation titled Not All Single Leg Squats Are Equal: A Biomechanical Comparison of Three Non-Stance Leg Positions. Anne is currently exploring opportunities in industry.

Sneha Patel received her DPT degree from Sargent College. Her current interests are in outpatient orthopedic and neurorehabilitation, and she strives to continuously incorporate research into clinical practice to promote health, wellness, and injury prevention.

Leo Chaidarun (right) received his BS degree in Human Physiology from Sargent College. He will attend medical school at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont this coming year, and hopes to continue his involvement in research there.

Kerri Graber received her BS degree in Health Studies from Sargent College. She will continue into the graduate portion of the BS/DPT accelerated program at Boston University, and will conduct her practicum project in HAL this coming year. Kerri received Sargent College's Senior Student Activity Award, which recognizes students who make strong contributions to their college and/or university extracurricular activities.

Jake Ferriero (left) received his BS degree in Biomedical Engineering (BME) from the College of Engineering and a minor in Mathematical Statistics from the College of Arts and Sciences. His BME Senior Design project was titled PID Control of Treadmill Speed Using Human Kinematics. Jake will work in IT consulting with Accenture in downtown Boston, delivering data analytics solutions in the cloud for clients in healthcare, life science, and financial industries because he is fascinated by the stochastic data sets generated by humans. He takes with him the methodological design of experiments, understanding of problems facing researchers and clinicians, a knack for troubleshooting on technical systems, and fond friendships built during his endless hours spent at HAL. He looks forward to seeing HAL continue to grow in the field of gait research. Jake encourages any lab members with an interest in control theory to reach out to him if they want to continue his previous work on the kinematics-based real-time treadmill belt speed controller.

Sherry Yan (right) received her BS degree in Biomedical Engineering from the College of Engineering. Her BME Senior Design project was titled 2-Photon Imaging: Simplifying time and labour-intensive post-experimental data processing. Sherry will be taking over as HAL's lab manager for the upcoming academic year, and continues to explore clinical research in the lab. Her interests include integrating videography into educational technology and patient education, as well as in personal media projects.

Denise Gravelle, our former lab manager, will be going to the University of Massachusetts Lowell to pursue her DPT degree.

Congratulations again to all of our members! We wish them well as they set off on their new adventures.

PhD Candidate Anne Khuu Successfully Defends her Doctoral Dissertation

Our PhD candidate, Anne Khuu, successfully defended her doctoral dissertation on April 20th, 2017. Anne’s dissertation is titled “Not all single leg squats are equal: A comparison of three non-stance leg positions”. Her research looks at the biomechanics of three single legged squat variations. She is Dr. Cara Lewis’s first PhD candidate to defend her dissertation. Congratulations, Anne!

Cara L. Lewis Honored with 2017 Biomechanics Early Career Investigator Award from APTA

Associate Professor Cara L. Lewis, PT, PhD, in the Department of Physical Therapy & Athletic Training, was honored with the Biomechanics Special Interest Group (SIG) Early Career Investigator Award from the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). She was presented with the award at the Biomechanics SIG meeting on Thursday, February 16, 2017 in San Antonio, as part of the APTA Combined Sections Meeting.

The Biomechanics SIG aims to promote and develop biomechanical research methods in order to advance physical therapy practices, expand the application of biomechanical research, represent the interests of SIG members, and serve as a network for researchers and clinicians.

Lewis’s scholarly research interests include studying musculoskeletal causes of hip pain and biomechanical analysis of human movement. She is the Director of the Sargent Human Adaptation Laboratory, which is dedicated to furthering the understanding of motor adaptation and developing interventions to reduce hip pain. 

Dr. Cara Lewis (center) with Sneha Patel, SPT (left) and Eva Ciccodicola, SPT (right). 

PhD Student Jing-Sheng Li Wins Award at Graduate Research Symposium

Our PhD student, Jing-Sheng Li, won the Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences Dean's Award at the 2016 Graduate Research Symposium. His abstract was titled The relationship between gait pattern in obese individuals and knee pain scores. Congratulations, Jing-Sheng!

Jing-Sheng Li at the 2016 Graduate Research Symposium