The Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology has announced the 8 winners of their SEED Funding Grant. The Centre’s mandate is to healthy, active partnerships between centre researchers and corporate members through collaborative projects, mutual interest building, and networking events.
Seed Funding Objectives
The mission of CBB's seed funding program is to Help develop sustainable research programs by facilitating applications to external agencies and support multi-disciplinary research across Waterloo's faculties. These grants of $5,000 or $10,000 will be used to mentor the next generation of researchers under CBB and to communicate CBB research impact on a local and global scale.
Two winners from the Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering department are Stewart McLachlin and James Tung.
Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms have a recognized ability to identify human movement patterns from wearable devices, such as smartphones and smartwatches, based on inertial sensor readings. however, these algorithms require large, comprehensive, and well-labeled data sets that can be challenging to collect, particularly when targeting those with physical disability and disease.
This research offers a novel approach to augment the volume and comprehensiveness of AI training data representing a broader spectrum of human physiology through virtual simulation of a wearable device and musculoskeletal modeling software. This work will enable the development of human activity recognition applications that continue to perform well in the context of musculoskeletal disease, injury, disability, and recovery.
While expectations for prosthetics differs with the age and lifestyle of the amputee, the socket-limb interface plays a common and critical role in comfort, functioning, and maintenance of the device. Formed to the unique shape of individual residual limbs by trained prosthetists, sockets are essentially static forms. A major challenge to interface fit is residual limb volume change over short- and long-term periods arising from multiple factors (e.g., muscle atrophy, inflammation, fluid retention), especially for new amputees who experience larger volume fluctuations.
The scope of the proposed research is to: 1) develop new tools to monitor socket fit and, 2) investigate the utility of biofeedback to educate new amputees on self-management approaches.