News

January 2024

We are grateful for a grant from the Virginia Tech Institute for Society, Culture and Environment! Funding will support a course in which we will educate students on stakeholder perspectives to NeuroRehabilitation.

Netta Gurari will join the neurorehab crowd at the ASNR Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas, this year! We will be hosting a session on tactile assessments and treatments post stroke.

December 2023

Great to have Brain Injury Solutions visit our lab this month! We are thrilled to build this partnership relevant to brain injury, neurorehabilitation, and advocacy in southwest Virginia for years to come!

November 2023

Welcome to Ben Wilkinson! Ben joined the RoSenCo Lab as a Masters student in our SBES program. Ben will be investigating how humans perceive their self-generated torques using mechatronics and psychophysics tools.

Congrats to our ME Senior Design team for being awarded a $3.5k grant. This funding will support the development of an MR-compatible tactile stimulator that has sensing capabilities.

October 2023

Netta Gurari was selected as the Graduate School Faculty Mentor of the Month! Great to see that, one year in, the atmosphere at the RoSenCo Lab is on target with our goal of being positive and supportive!

Our latest publication is out about 5 years from when the study began. This paper is the first of a series of experiments exposing somatosensory deficits occurring in individuals with stroke that were previously unknown.

August 2023

Netta Gurari shared the lab’s latest work at the Advancing Neuroscience Research Symposium at Virginia Tech!

July 2023

Eileen Medina presented our latest research on electrotactile stimuli detection in older adults at IEEE World Haptics Conference in Delft, Netherlands.

Nahid Kalantary demonstrated our innovative MRI-compatible tactile stimulator for post-stroke rehabilitation at the IEEE World Haptics Conference in Delft, Netherlands.

June 2023

We are excited to introduce Engineering Mechanics PhD student Nahid Kalantary, who officially joined our lab this summer. Welcome Nahid!

We look forward to sharing a demo at the IEEE World Haptics Conference in Delft, Netherlands this July! We are bringing a novel custom tactile stimulator that can be used with the paretic hand of individuals post stroke in an MRI scanner.

May 2023

Happy to share our latest publication that considers shear wave ultrasound elastography to measure resistance to muscle elongation post stroke. Shear waves ultrasound elastography may augment the conventional method of manually testing joint mobility.

Congratulations to Northwestern University undergraduate students Jason Wang on winning 1st place for his poster presentation at the Northwestern Undergraduate Research Expo @OURatNU! Jason shared his research over the past two years on creating an MR-compatible tactile stimulator.

April 2023

We are excited that our efforts to understand how tactile stimuli are perceived during voluntary motor activation will be shared at the IEEE World Haptics Conference. Our accepted ToH paper is now online.

Congratulations to RoSenCo Lab member Emily Tirrell for being selected as the graduate student representative for the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors!

March 2023

We are happy to have our study investigating which features of motor control impact torque perception accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Haptics.

February 2023

We are excited to receive a SEED Grant from Radford University to support the development of a stroke registry in Southwest Virginia. Drs. Kevin Parcetich (PI) and Netta Gurari (Co-I) are collaborating with Carilion Clinic to launch this registry in 2023.

We are thrilled that the lab's first doctoral student, May Cai, successfully completed her PhD. Congratulations to Dr. Cai, and we are excited to see her career progress as she enters the workforce as a Data Scientist.

We are excited to share our results on kinesthesia post stroke at the American Society for Neurorehabilitation. We will share our preliminary findings demonstrating that perception of self-generated movements is abnormal when the paretic shoulder abductions after a stroke.

December 2022

Netta Gurari was awarded a New Faculty Mentoring Grant to support her attendance at the TIGRR workshop. This grant and the TIGRR workshop will support the lab in developing its first NIH R01 application.

Netta Gurari was recognized for mentoring 15 successful undergraduate grant proposals with being included on the NU Faculty Honor Roll. These students were awarded ~$50,0000 of their own funding support between 2018 and 2022.

November 2022

Netta Gurari was awarded a TIGRR Travel Award from the American Society for Neurorehabilitation. This award and the TIGRR workshop will support the lab in developing its first NIH R01 application.

Welcome to Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health PhD student Emily Tirrell! Emily is in the first year of her program and will pursue a doctoral project relevant to identifying factors that affect tactile perception in individuals with and without stroke.

Welcome to Neuroscience PhD student Anna Feldbush! Anna is in the first year of her program and will pursue a doctoral project relevant to tracking tactile signals along the nervous system of individuals with and without stroke.

October 2022

Congrats to undergraduate students Rui, Tory, Abby, Gabe, Hanna, and Phineas on being awarded a Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Department Grant! This grant will support the students' senior design project of developing a system to assess tactile perception in individuals post stroke, in collaboration with Dr. Kevin Parcetich.

September 2022

We are excited to welcome Eileen Medina to Virginia Tech, where she will continue contributing to the lab as a Research Assistant!

August 2022

We are excited to launch our lab at Virginia Tech while maintaining our ties with Northwestern University. It has been a great journey, and we are excited for the adventures that lay ahead in the Blue Ridge Mountains!

We are grateful to be awarded supplemental NIH funding to support the lab during the critical life event of a new child (NOT-OD-20-054). For those interested in the details of our application, we are happy to share our identified added time commitments in raising a child.

We are excited to bid lab technician Pijuan Yu farewell as he moves on to his doctoral studies relevant to haptics at Texas A&M!

June 2022

We are excited to welcome Virginia Tech undergraduate student Lindsey Sydnor to our lab at Northwestern University this summer. Lindsey is the newest lab member to pursue research relevant to tactile deficits post stroke.

May 2022

We are excited that NU undergraduate student, Amy Wang, had her work accepted for presentation at the Undergraduate Research and Arts Exposition. Amy will share her progress in quantifying elbow impedance in individuals with stroke based on data previously collected using a robotic device.

April 2022

We are excited to share that lab member Alan Duong was accepted to the Doctor of Physical Therapy program at NU PTHMS as a junior undergraduate student -- a tremendous achievement!

Congratulations to Jason Yang on being awarded an NU Summer Undergraduate Research Grant! This grant will support Jason to pursue full-time research relevant to tracking tactile signals in the brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Congratulations to Karan Nayak on being awarded an NU Summer Undergraduate Research Grant! In addition, Karan was selected as having one of the top summer research projects; in turn, Karan was one of seven students out of the 237 summer grant winners to receive support from the Hung-Farinelli family. This grant will support Karan to pursue full-time research relevant to understanding tactile perceptual deficits in individuals with stroke.

March 2022

Netta Gurari was awarded a Virginia Tech ICTAS Junior Faculty Program grant, which will provide $80,000 to investigate tactile deficits occurring in individuals with stroke. This project includes support from Co-Investigators Sharon Ramey and Stephen LaConte, as well as clinician Kevin Parcetich.

February 2022

Congratulations to Eileen Medina on being awarded an Academic Year Undergraduate Research Grant to investigate tactile perceptual deficits occurring post stroke!

Our study investigating the impact of voluntary muscle activation on detecting electrical stimuli post stroke was accepted for a poster presentation at the American Society for Neurorehabilitation annual meeting.

We published our latest work on stroke in which we show an impact of voluntary muscle activation on stretch reflex excitability. This work was accepted to Frontiers in Neurology.

January 2022

Netta Gurari shared the lab's latest work on somatosensory deficits post stroke at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab Research Seminar Series.

November 2021

Congrats to Netta Gurari on being awarded an Excellence in Research Mentorship Fletcher Award!

Congrats to undergraduate student, Eileen Medina, on being awarded a Conference Travel Grant by the NU Office for Undergraduate Research to attend Neuroscience!

October 2021

Congratulations to Eileen Medina on being selected as a finalist for the Fletcher Prize for the Rising Undergraduate Research Star, and to the NU Office of Undergraduate Research for making this summer research experience in our lab possible!

Welcome to Mackenzie Gray! Mackenzie is a BS/MS student in Mechanical Engineering who is pursuing her research experience with us as she develops a tactile device for usage with individuals post stroke.

Congratulations to Alan Duong on receiving an Academic Year Undergraduate Research Grant! This funding will support Alan in investigating somatosensory deficits occurring post stroke.

August 2021

Great job to undergraduate student, Eileen Medina, for presenting her first poster at the Movement and Rehabilitation Sciences Research Training Day. Eileen summarized her summer research experience in which she performed a pilot study on tactile perception post stroke.

Congratulations to May Cai, Eileen Medina, Stefani Gonzalez, and Alan Duong on the acceptance of their abstract to Neuroscience 2021! These authors will share at Neuroscience 2021 our latest work on tactile perception in individuals with stroke.

June 2021

Welcome to Alan Duong! Alan is a rising undergraduate junior, specializing in Neuroscience, who will be assisting with our human subject data collection throughout the summer.

Welcome to Eileen Medina, who has been selected as a Summer Undergraduate Research Assistantship Program fellow to pursue research in our lab this summer!

Congratulations to Jackson Bremen, who has been selected as a Summer Undergraduate Research Assistantship Program fellow to continue pursuing research in our lab this summer!

May 2021

Congratulations to Sophie Chang for being awarded a grant to continue her research project throughout the summer, and a big thanks to the Biological Sciences Summer Grant for providing the support!

Congratulations to Karan Nayak for being awarded a grant to continue his research project throughout the summer, and a big thanks to the Weinberg College Summer Research Grant for providing the support!

Congrats to Netta Gurari on being selected as a finalist for the Northwestern University Fletcher Prize for Excellence in Research Mentorship.

We are excited to share our latest work (virtually) in July at the IEEE World Haptics Conference! May Cai will be presenting our study on how abducting at the shoulder impacts the perception of a torque about the elbow.

Congratulations to Karan Nayak for being awarded a Weinberg College Summer Research Grant to continue his research project throughout the summer, and a big thanks to the Baker Program in Undergraduate Research for providing the support!

Congratulations to Jason Yang and Zarif Ceaser for each being awarded a grant to continue their research projects throughout the summer, and a big thanks to the Summer Internship Grant Program for providing the support!

Welcome Nicole Baptist! Nicole is a Northwestern University Master of Science in Robotics student who will be working with us in the development of an MRI-compatible, pneumatically-controlled device to physically stimulate the fingertip.

April 2021

Our final publication on one's perception of where their arm is positioned post stroke is now published ("Investigation of How Accurately Individuals with Hemiparetic Stroke can Mirror their Forearm Positions", PLOS ONE). Findings provide further evidence that how accurately individuals with #stroke perceive their arm position depends on how a task is performed.

We are excited to have been awarded a NU Undergraduate Research Assistant Program award, which will support two new undergraduate students to conduct research in our lab during the summer.

Congrats to Om Gandhi on his acceptance to University of Pennsylvania! Om spent the past two summers with us as a high school student research intern, and we are excited to learn about his future endeavors in Philly!

Congrats to Stefani Gonzalez and Katie Mumford on being awarded a grant to continue with us their research this summer, and a big thanks to the Office of Undergraduate Research at Northwestern University for providing the support through their Summer Undergraduate Research Grant Program!

February 2021

Congrats to May Cai on being nominated by the Northwestern University Interdepartmental Neuroscience (NUIN) Program for the Presidential Fellowship. This fellowship is the most prestigious award given by Northwestern University to graduate students, and May was selected amongst her peers to represent NUIN and compete for this fellowship!

January 2021

We are excited to welcome a multi-disciplinary cohort of Northwestern University undergraduate students to our lab to help develop our latest ideas. The areas of interest represented include Biological Sciences, Computer Science, Neuroscience, Electrical Engineering, and Business Institutions. Welcome Zarif Ceasar, Sophie Chang, Eric McDougal, Katie Mumford, Karan Nayak, Amy Wang, and Jason Yang!

December 2020

Netta Gurari shared our lab's work with the Northwestern University Department of Computer Science. We are excited for this opportunity to facilitate collaborations!

November 2020

Congrats to Netta Gurari on being awarded the Northwestern University Karl Rosengren Faculty Mentoring Award.

We were excited to share how accurately individuals with stroke can perceive their self-generated actions at the BioRob workshop "Robot-aided neuromechanics: using robots to study sensorimotor function and impairment". Great job May and Polina!

October 2020

We are excited to have been awarded a NU Undergraduate Research Assistant Program award, which will support two new undergraduate students to conduct research in our lab.

September 2020

Congratulations to Polina Cherepanova on being awarded the Northwestern University Fletcher URG Prize for the most outstanding Summer Undergraduate Research Grant project! And a big thanks to the Office of Undergraduate Research at Northwestern University for supporting and recognizing Polina's efforts and contributions!

A BIG congrats to May Cai on successfully completing her NUIN thesis proposal! And a BIG thank you to her committee members of Jules Dewald, Matt Tresch, and Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi on their insightful feedback and suggestions!

August 2020

We are excited for Lauren Henderson to join our research team! Lauren is an occupational therapist working at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab who will be assisting in the development of our newest studies related to proprioception.

Netta Gurari presented our most recent findings during the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab Research Seminar Series. Great opportunity to discuss our ideas with some of the best clinicians in the world!

July 2020

We are excited about the acceptance of May Cai's first-authored manuscript accepted for publication with Scientific Reports. May studied how accurately torques are perceived during a multi-joint task using a novel protocol.

May 2020

Congrats to Stefani Gonzalez on being selected to participate in the 2020 Summer Internship Grant Program, and thanks to the Northwestern Division of Student Affairs for supporting her research endeavors!

April 2020

Congrats to Polina Cherepanova on being awarded a grant to continue with us her research this summer, and a big thanks to the Office of Undergraduate Research at Northwestern University for providing the support through their Summer Undergraduate Research Grant Program!

Welcome Musheng He and Alex Hay! Musheng and Alex are Northwestern University Master of Science in Robotics students who will be working with us in the development of our studies for improving our understanding of torque perception.

We are happy to share that Northwestern University alumnus Ling is joining the PhD program at the National University of Singapore. Ling completed with us his Master of Science in Robotics final project, and we are excited about this next step in his academic career!

We are excited to announce the first publication from our NIH R21-funded work, which is titled 'Quantifying altered neural connectivity of the stretch reflex in chronic hemiparetic stroke' and is being published in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems & Rehabilitation. The study identifies multi-spectral phase coherence as an approach for quantifying usage of indirect motor pathways and associated spasticity post-stroke.

March 2020

Congrats to Camille Guzman on being accepted to the Biomechanical Engineering Research Experience for Undergraduates at the University of Delaware, as well as the Research Internships in Science and Engineering (RISE) DAAD program in Germany!

Congrats to Camille Guzman on being accepted to the 2020 Summer School on Neurorehabilitation, as well as on receiving a Northwestern University Conference Travel Grant, via the Office of Undergraduate Research, to support her attendance!

February 2020

Congrats to Camille Guzman for being awarded a Northwestern University Conference Travel Grant, via the Office of Undergraduate Research, to attend and present our work at the Haptics Symposium 2020!

Congrats to first authors May Cai and Camille Guzman on the acceptance of our work-in-progress manuscript for presentation at the Haptics Symposium 2020! Great discussions to be had about how humans perceive their self-generated torques during multi-joint tasks.

December 2019

Welcome Polina Cherepanova, Therese Schachner, and Stefani Gonzalez! Polina, Therese, and Stefani are NU undergraduate students who will be joining us in our studies of torque perception.

November 2019

Congratulations to May Cai, Justin Drogos, Jules Dewald, and Netta Gurari on the acceptance of our paper for publication with Frontiers in Neuroscience. The article titled 'Individuals with Hemiparetic Stroke Accurately Match Torques they Generate about Each Elbow Joint' is our latest publication in our investigation of the extent to which individuals with stroke inaccurately judge their self-generated torques.

We are excited to have been awarded a NU Undergraduate Research Assistant Program award, which will support an undergraduate student to conduct research in our lab.

October 2019

May Cai presented our latest research, indicating how accurately torques can be judged during single- and multi-jointed tasks, at Neuroscience 2019. The lab has been having great discussions over the past eight days at ASNR, MLMC, V. Reggie Edgerton Symposium, and SfN.

September 2019

Welcome Alex Webb! Alex is a Northwestern University mechanical engineering masters student who will be working with us in our investigation of how accurately individuals post-stroke judge their self-generated torques.

August 2019

Camille Guzman shared our research at the 9th Annual Movement and Rehabilitation Sciences Training Day, describing how accurately individuals with hemiparetic stroke can match torques they generate about each elbow.

A big congrats to May Cai on passing her qualifying exam in the Northwestern University Interdepartmental Neuroscience doctoral program!

Congratulations to Netta Gurari, Nina van der Helm, Justin Drogos, and Jules Dewald on the acceptance of our paper for publication with Frontiers in Neurology - Stroke. The article titled 'Accuracy of Individuals Post-Hemiparetic Stroke in Matching Torques Between Arms Depends on the Arm Referenced' is our first major publication in our investigation of the extent to which individuals with stroke inaccurately judge their self-generated torques.

July 2019

Congrats to our collaborators, Yuan Yang and Jules Dewald (co-PIs), who were awarded an NIH NICHD NCMRR R21 grant! Dr. Gurari will be supporting the awarded project as a co-investigator, applying her skills in robotics and human subject testing in the investigation of indirect motor pathways that are recruited in individuals with stroke.

Welcome Om Gandhi! Om is a rising high school junior who will be assisting with the development of a new custom mechatronic system for use in our human subject experiments.

Congrats to May who presented our work on how accurately individuals with stroke judge their self-generated torques within each arm at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab Science of Ability Symposium.

June 2019

Congrats to Camille who was awarded a Northwestern University Summer Internship Grant to work with May and I on our investigation of perceptual impairments in individuals with stroke.

Congrats to Ahalya who presented our work on a training game to coordinate torques produced between arms at the International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics 2019 during Rehab Week.

We are looking forward to the discussions that we will have at the upcoming Neuroscience 2019 in Chicago. Nice job May for taking the lead on the project that we will present in our accepted abstract!

Welcome Camille! Camille is a rising junior undergraduate student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering who will be assisting with running our human subject studies.

Welcome Jackson Bremen! Jackson is a rising high school senior who will be assisting with programming software to automate the delivery of our human subject experiments.