Our People - Neurodegenerative Diseases

Research Interests:

• Assistive Robotics and Rehabilitation Engineering

• Neuromechanical Modeling; Robot-Based System ID
• Human-Robot Interaction and Neural Control
• Movement Analysis and Sensorimotor Deficit Modeling
• Smart Implants and Prosthetics
• Intelligent Systems and Machine Learning 

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Research Interests:

• Multisensory integration
• Perception and action
• Psychophysics
• The vestibular system
• Virtual reality

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[Waterloo News] September 25, 2018 "Virtual reality motion sickness may be predicted and counteracted"

[ScienceDaily] December 15, 2018 "Aging warps our perception of time, study finds"

[Record] October 12, 2017 "Aging slows perception of falls: UW study"

Research Interests:

• Treatment of neurological disorders (Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and mental health conditions including schizophrenia and depression)

• Molecular pharmacology and pharmaceutical delivery

• Intracellular signaling pathways in neurons, and the role of cytoskeletal dynamics in the trafficking of receptors in neurons

ResearchGate

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Research Interests:

• Intelligent technology
• Ambient assisted living
• Zero-effort technology
• Aging, health, and wellbeing
• Assistive Technology

Schlegel Research Chair in Technology for Independent Living

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Research Interests:

• Imaging for Type 1 Diabetes
• Alzheimer Diagnosis
• Imaging of the Rear of the Eye
• Optical Properties of the Eye amd changes in the Eye's Optical Properties
• Two Photon Therapies
• Ophthalmic instrumentation, optical systems, quality and design

• Confocal microscopy and ophthalmoscopy, measurement of refractive error

• Retinal image quality

• Optical effects of refractive surgery, reflections from the retina

• Optical properties of the eye, monochromatic aberrations of the eye

• Refractive properties of the crystalline lens and their changes with growth and accommodation

• Eye-imaging systems for treatment and diagnosis

• Biophysics, bio-photonics, and Vision Science.

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[Research2Reality] May 8, 2015 "Early Alzheimer's Diagnosis: Imaging the Living Eye"

[YouTube Lecture] October 1, 2014 "Optics of the Eye as a Window on the Brain"

[YouTube] February 12, 2013 "Melanie Campbell AAAS Profile"

[Waterloo Stories] February 12, 2013 "An early test for Alzhemer's disease"

[Waterloo Stories] January 22, 2013 "Early test for Alzheimer's may rely on the eyes"

Office of Research - Technology Transfer & Commercialization:

• Imaging Amyloid Beta in the Retina
• Ophthalmic and Microscopy Imaging Technology

Research Interests:

• Effect of food, beverages, herbal products and other drugs on drug metabolism and disposition
• Investigation of the interaction between grapefruit juice and prescription medication
• pharmacokinetics

• drug metabolism

• pharmacogenomics

• drug interactions

• bioavailability/bioequivalence

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Research Interests:

• Intelligent drug delivery system design (dermal, transdermal, transmucosal, ocular, and intranasal) for Dermatology, Ophthalmology, Cancer, Immunology (Glaucoma, neural degenerative disorders, HPV, LSIL/CIN I, cervical cancer, Scleroderma)

• Non-invasive drug delivery technologies, biomolecular devices

• Gene therapy, protein, and vaccine development

• Nanomedicine, pharmaceutical development

• Nanotoxicology (nanomaterials, bioimaging, biomarkers)

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ResearchGate

[Global Impact] [CBC] April 30, 2018 "Working with gene therapy to treat glaucoma"

[Waterloo Stories] July 5, 2012 "Revolutionary drug delivery"

Research interests:

[Science Direct] August 10, 2018 "Revealing the atomistic details behind the binding of B7–1 to CD28 and CTLA-4: A comprehensive protein-protein modelling study"

[Nature] August 27, 2019 "Comprehensive in vitro characterization of PD-L1 small molecule inhibitors"

Research Interests:

• Regenerative medicine

• Nitric Oxide Synthase (NOS) structure, function, enzyme processes and the effects on blood pressure, neurotransmission, insulin release, memory storage, immune response, septic shock, atherosclerosis, diabetes, and myocardial and cerebral ischemia.

ResearchGate

​LinkedIn

Research Interests:

• Assistive technology (physical, cognitive disabilities, dementia)

• Health informatics

• Artificial intelligence

• Computational social science

• Affective computing, computer vision

Research Gate

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[VJDementia] "The complex issue of emotion" 

[Computer Science News] June 29, 2017 "ACT@Home: An emotionally intelligent cognitive assistant to help people with Alzheimer’s disease"

[Waterloo Stories] January 2, 2013 "Making life easier for those living with Alzheimer's"

Research Interests:

• Design/discovery of potential therapeutics to target various diseases
• Understanding the structure and pharmacology of membrane proteins
• Development of in silico methods/tools for sequence, structure and functional analysis
• Inferring the structure-function evolution of proteins
• Protein engineering for biotechnology and pharmaceutical applications

[American Chemical Society] January 23, 2012 "Exploring Inhibitor Release Pathways in Histone Deacetylases Using Random Acceleration Molecular Dynamics Simulations"

[Wiley Online Library] July 27, 2013 "Ligand release mechanisms and channels in histone deacetylases"

[Royal Society of Chemistry] December 19, 2013 "A steered molecular dynamics mediated hit discovery for histone deacetylases"

[Nature Methods] May 8, 2017 "ModelFinder: fast model selection for accurate phylogenetic estimates"

[Royal Society of Chemistry] October 24, 2017 "Reverse engineering: transaminase biocatalyst development using ancestral sequence reconstruction"

Research Interests:

• Improving nutrition and health in hospitals, long term care and the community
• Dementia

Schlegel Research Chair in Nutrition & Aging

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[Grand River Hospital News] March 15, 2019 "Good food, better healing: How GRH is studying to improve food for patients in hospital"

​[Waterloo News] March 23, 2017 "Survey will reduce rates of malnutrition in hospitals"

Research Interests:

• Biomedical systems & biomechatronics - rehabilitation, assistive devices, intelligent design of prostheses and orthoses, 3D body surface measurement
• Optomechatronics - computer vision (2D and 3D), range-image registration, range-sensing, range-sensor design, vision-based 3D surface measurement systems, optical system design, laser-camera range, sensor design, phase-shifting / fringe-projection 3D surface measurement systems, real-time full-field 3D imaging sensors / real-time full-field 3D surface measurement systems, hand-held 3D imaging sensors / hand-held 3D surface measurement systems, vision-based robot control, vision-based human-robot interfaces
• Robotics - robot teleoperation, robot vision, human-robot interfaces, human-robot interaction, human-guided robot learning, vision-based robot control (visual servoing), human-assistive/service robots

Office of Research - Technology Transfer & Commercialization:

• Real-Time Full-Field 3D Shape Measurement

Research Interests:

• Biophysics of lipids and lipid-protein interactions

• The role of structural changes and physical properties of lipid template in controlling biological processes and diseases

• Biomedical nanotechnology (lipid films, molecular mechanism of Alzheimer's disease)

• Drug development and delivery systems, antimicrobial peptides in lung disorders

• Fluorescence and atomic force microscopy

• Kelvin probe force microscopy and single molecule force spectroscopy

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ResearchGate

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[Global Impact] May 2018, studying Alzheimer's at a molecular level to find a cure

[YouTube Lecture] October 1, 2014 "Scanning probe microscopy in biomedical research"

Research Interests:

Research interests:

• Aging and neurodegeneration
• Movement disorders
• Gait kinematics
• Neuropsychology and neurocognitive assessment
• Mood, emotion and cognition
• Fear, threat, anxiety and depression
• Virtual reality

Google Scholar

Research interests:

• Neurodegeneration
• Huntington Disease
• Autophagy
• Apoptosis
• Fatty acylation

Google Scholar

Research Interests:

• Proteins: energetics, kinetics, mechanisms, structure, dynamics, folding, function, evolution, engineering and design, thermodynamics, kinetics (ALS, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, prions, cancer)

• High resolution nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (fluorescence, CD, NMR, FTIR, DLS)

• Optical spectroscopies

• Bioinformatics and computational modelling

• Biocomputing and protein engineering

• Biophysical chemistry and biochemistry
• Bionanotechnology and biomaterials

​[Waterloo News] November 24, 2015 "New insights into protein structure could change the future of biomedicine"

[​Chemistry News] August 20, 2014 "Chemist Elizabeth Meiering takes on the ALS ice bucket challenge"

Research Interests:

•  design and control of spinal exoskeletons for he prevention of back pain
•  development of assistive robotic devices to increase mobility of older person
•  design studies of lower limb exoskeletons

Research Interests:

• Drug discovery
• Rational drug design and medicinal chemistry
• Cancer therapy
• Treatment of neurological disorders (Alzheimer's, Parkinson's)
• Drug discovery/rational design
• Synthesis and biological evaluation of novel organic molecules and peptides/peptidomimics as therapeutic agents

ResearchGate

​Google Scholar

[Science News] October 22, 2018 "Nekkar lab determines that depression medications can help treat Alzheimer’s disease"

​[Pharmacy News] July 29, 2015 "Waterloo pharmacist examines drug therapies for Alzheimer’s disease"

Research interests:

• Aging
• Balance and mobility impairment
• Central nervous system function
• Wireless sensor technologies

[National Centre for Biotechnology Information] August 31, 2019 "Key factors for the assessment of mobility in advanced dementia: A consensus approach"

[Ontario Neurodegenerative Disease Research Initiative] September 26, 2019 "Wearable technologies to improve health outcomes in people with neurodegenerative diseases?"

Research Interests:

• Neural networks and neural learning algorithms
• Dynamical systems and scientific computing
• Computational neuroscience

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ResearchGate

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[CBB researcher story] July 20, 2015 "Computational Perception: How a brain understands its environment"

Research Interests:

• Machine learning and reasoning under uncertainty (artificial intelligence, computational statistics, decision and control theory)

• Health informatics (assistive technologies, behaviour recognition, smart walkers, Alzheimer’s monitoring)

• Natural language understanding (dialogue management, semantic analysis)

Google Scholar

[National Post] May 11, 2018, weighs in on how Google's A.I. personal assistant sparks concerns about future of communication

[The Record] May 8,2018, have ties with a new Montreal sports analytics research lab in Kitchener

[Markets Insider] February 5, 2018 "Borealis AI increases brain power by adding top AI talent"

[The Globe and Mail] February 4, 2018 "How we can leverage AI to bridge academia and business"

[Waterloo Stories] April 12, 2013 "Breaking the fall: Smart walker will help prevent injuries"

Research Interests

• Early Cancer Detection
• Eliminating Positive Surgical Margins
• Non-contact Biopsies for Endoscopy 
• Functional Brain Imaging 
• Early Detection and Understanding the Age-related Vision Loss Problems
• Wound Care
• Cardiovascular
• Machine learning/AI

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[Google Scholar]

Alternate Location:

• Satellite Campus, UW-Schlegel Research Institute for Aging, Research Building, Sensors and Devices Lab

Research Interests:

• Bio-wearable electronics and systems
• Bio-electromagnetics, bio-technology, bio-sensors and energy harvesting systems
• RF/microwave/millimeter wave/Terahertz (THz) circuits and antenna systems
• Radio frequency (RF)/microwave packaging and Electromagnetic compatibility 
• (EMC)/Electromagnetic interface (EMI) analyses
• Vehicle and UAV wireless communications, navigation systems, and telematics systems
• Complex propagation and scattering phenomena
• Devices and novel electromagnetic materials and wireless sensors

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Awards:

• Top downloaded paper in Medical Physics (arXiv) – October 2019
• Best Imaging Paper, CVS, 2018
• ACM MobileHCI 2017 Best Worskshop Paper Award
• IEEE APS 2017 SPC Honorable Mention Paper Award
• IEEE Sensors Most Popular Article (March 2017)
• IEEE Sensors Annual Volume Cover Page

[CBB Events] November 15, 2019 "Professor Shaker organizes a Health Canada Regulatory insights Workshop"

[CNN] November 11, 2019 "Scientists develop sensor to save children and pets from hot car deaths"

[Waterloo News] October 29, 2019 "Advancing healthcare through innovative technology"

[Inside Digital Health] June 3, 2019 "Study: Radar Monitors Sleep with Accuracy Comparable to Current Standards"

[Waterloo News]  June 28, 2018 "AI and radar technologies could help diabetics manage their disease"

[Engineering News] June 28, 2018 "Researchers developing a prick-free glucose monitor"

[RD Magazine] June 28, 2018 "AI and Radar Technologies Could Help Diabetics Manage Their Disease" 

[Engineering News] July 5, 2016 "Waterloo wins big with tiny power device"

Research Interests:

• Biomechanics
• Mathematical modeling of hydrocephalus
• Mathematical oncology

ResearchGate

[Applied Mathematics Biomedical Research Group]

[Waterloo Stories] January 16, 2018 "Math can predict how cancer cells evolve"

Research Interests:

• Drug discovery, delivery systems and nanomedicine

• Gene therapy, microbial genetics

• Oncology, Antiviral therapeutics design

• Anti-bacterials

• Acne cosmeceutical design

• Phage-based biotechnology

• Viral exclusion systems

• Cosmeceuticals

• Vaccine design (dementia), bacteriophage-based biotechnology, use of coliphages to design and construct vectors for the development of novel vaccines, pharmaceuticals and gene delivery systems, and the identification and application of novel phage genomic anti-bacterial genes with potential phage therapy applications.

• Strategic management in Pharmacy; healthcare reform

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ResearchGate

Research Interests:

• Calcium channel analysis for target drug delivery for treatment of pain, arrhythmias, angina, and potential benefits in treatment of epilepsy and cancer.

• Structure, function and pharmacology of calcium channels and sodium channels

• Structure and function and analysis of NALCN cation channel  and anti-calcium channel toxins

• The Spafford Neurobiology Research Laboratory studies voltage-gated calcium channels, molecular physiology, biophysics, cell biology, protein biochemistry, fluorescence microscopy and tissue cultures.

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ResearchGate

​Google Scholar

[Science News] April 25, 2014 "Waterloo discovers a key regulator in the pacemakers of our brain and heart"

Research Interests:

• Electrophysiological characterization of neuromuscular disorders

• Autonomous and knowledge systems

• Machine perception and sensors

• Image processing and analysis, pattern analysis and recognition

• EMG signal decomposition, simulation and quantitative EMG and DQEMG

• Biomedical engineering

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​Google Scholar

Research Interests:

• Rehabilitation engineering and assistive technologies (gerontology, Osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease, fall risk in stroke survivors, and rehabilitation following traumatic brain injury)

• Neuromotor control

• Biomedical signal analysis

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ResearchGate

​Google Scholar

[Waterloo Stories] July 8, 2014 "GPS technology may help detect Alzheimer’s disease earlier"

Research Interests:

• Biomedical image processing and analysis (prostate, breast, lung and dermatological cancer analysis, retinal photoreceptor and blood vessel analysis, musculoskeletal kinematic analysis

• Remote sensing data processing and analysis (sea ice, underwater object, oil spill analysis)

• Perceptual based video and image processing (noise reduction, compression, enhancement)

• Computer vision and pattern recognition

• Multimedia management systems

• 3D graphics and game development

• Cognitive radio networks

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Google Scholar

Canada Research Chair in Medical Imaging Systems [Canada Research Chair Profile]

[Daily Bulletin] June 1, 2018, 11 CBB Members Named Outstanding Performance Award Winners

[Waterloo News] [CBC News] [Gadgets] May 16, 2018, Co-authors discuss the use of aerobic fitness data from wearable tech to predict illness

[Waterloo News] May 15, 2018 "Researchers combine wearable technology and AI to predict the onset of health problems"

[Global Impact] [570 news] [Youtube] April 11, 2018 "How AI is helping doctors diagnose Cancer" 

[The Star] February 9, 2018 "How TheRedPin aims to take a swipe at the real estate industry"

[Waterloo News] June 7, 2017 "Artificial intelligence-driven imaging research makes diagnosing disease easier"

[Waterloo Stories] January 28, 2017 "Artificial intelligence and the Waterloo-Toronto tech supercluster"

[Waterloo Stories] May 20, 2016 "Breakthrough tech helps doctors more accurately diagnose cancer"

[CBB researcher story] January 9, 2013 "Improving Early Diagnosis to Save Lives"

[Waterloo Stories] January 9, 2013 "Making it harder for cancer to hide"

[YouTube Lecture] October 1, 2014 "Integrative systems for biomedical imaging and analysis"

Research interests:

• Vision rehabilitation
• Systems for optimizing patient care outcomes
• Retinal disease
• Pharmacology.

Research Interests:

• Stem cells, nanofabrication and advancement of biomaterials in healthcare technologies to repair, replace or regenerate damaged tissue and organ structures

• Fabrication and application of nano-structure for biomedical applications in neural, vascular, and cornea tissue engineering

• ​Biomaterial approach to study ex-vivo pluripotent stem cell expansion

• Modulation of cell behavior with nanotopography

• Topography-regulation of stem cells lineage commitment and differentiation

• Differentiation of adult and pluripotent stem cells with nanotopography

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