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Congrats to Erik Lamers on passing his PhD Qualifier exam!

Mar. 1, 2020—Dissertation Proposal Title: Design, Development and Evaluation of New Quasi-Passive Wearable Assistive Devices: From Ankle Prosthetics to Low Back Exosuits

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New Publication: Characterizing the Comfort Limits of Forces Applied to the Shoulders, Thigh and Shank to Inform Exosuit Design

Feb. 12, 2020—Congrats to Dr. Matthew Yandell on publishing the final chapter of his PhD dissertation! Yandell, M. B., Ziemnicki, D. M., McDonald, K. A. and Zelik, K. E. (2020). Characterizing the Comfort Limits of Forces Applied to the Shoulders, Thigh and Shank to Inform Exosuit Design. PLoS One. 15.2: e0228536. ARTICLE  –  EXOSKELETONREPORT

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CREATE is recruiting new PhD students to join the team Fall 2020

Nov. 19, 2019—The CREATE faculty are excited to review graduate student applications for Fall 2020, and expect to have multiple PhD student openings. Prof. Zelik is looking for students interested to perform research related to movement biomechanics, human augmentation exosuits for lifting or mobility assistance, wearable sensing technologies to prevent musculoskeletal injuries and/or lower-limb prosthetics. Vanderbilt University has a...

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CREATE fun, travel and festivities

Nov. 19, 2019—Zelik Lab in Calgary for International Society of Biomechanics Conference (Aug 2019)       Prof. Goldfarb eclipses 10,000 citations of his publications. A great reason to celebrate and congratulate! We are lucky to have him as a leader, mentor and role model at Vanderbilt! CREATE PhD student Jantzen shows off robotic knee to visitors...

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Congrats to Erik and Maura on their new publication on adaptive ankle prostheses

Oct. 11, 2019—Subject-specific responses to an adaptive ankle prosthesis during incline walking https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0021929019304798 Abstract Individuals with lower-limb amputation often have difficulty walking on slopes, in part due to limitations of conventional prosthetic feet. Conventional prostheses have fixed ankle set-point angles and cannot fully replicate able-bodied ankle dynamics. Microprocessor-controlled ankles have been developed to help overcome these limitations....

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Zelik Lab attends ISB/ASB & FBS conferences in Canada

Sep. 6, 2019—We had a great time participating in the International Society of Biomechanics / American Society of Biomechanics conference in Calgary, Canada; and also sent a smaller contingent to the Footwear Biomechanics Symposium in Kananaskis, Canada beforehand. Conference abstracts (and a video recording of Prof. Zelik’s presentation) can be found HERE. Special congratulations to Emily Matijevich...

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Mechanical misconceptions: Have we lost the “mechanics” in “sports biomechanics”?

Aug. 27, 2019—Enjoyed contributing to this publication: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0021929019304452 Particularly given the unexpected, Twitter-aided origins of Prof. Zelik’s involvement, which are summarized in the tweets linked below: Our Mechanical Misconceptions perspective just published in @JBiomech. In this paper, we discuss, in an accessible way, some common misapplications in sports biomechanics. This paper started a preprint and had a nice journey...

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Post-Doc Opening: Biomechanics & Wearable Technology

Jun. 26, 2019—— THIS POSITION HAS BEEN FILLED — We are currently accepting applications for a post-doctoral researcher. The post-doc will contribute to multidisciplinary research projects at the intersection of human movement biomechanics, wearable sensing, signal analysis, musculoskeletal modeling, injury prevention, smart clothing, exosuits and other wearable technologies. Full details on position & how to apply are available...

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Our new foray into broader science communication: Podcasts (three in the past month!)

Jun. 26, 2019—1) Emily Matijevich & Karl Zelik were guests on the Running Medicine podcast, discussing their PLOS ONE publication on running biomechanics, injury prevention and wearables, and well as common myths and misconceptions related to ground reaction forces, impacts and loading rates. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/do-ground-reaction-forces-reflect-bone-loads/id1097141405?i=1000442715015   2) Maura Eveld was interviewed as a guest on As It Happens – NPR/Candian...

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