The goal of our lab is to study principles of biomechanics, neural control, and metabolic energetics during locomotion to improve wearable devices.  Research in our lab incorporates experiments and considerations from across physiological scales, spanning the signaling of the sensory afferent neurons to whole-body biomechanics.  By understanding this broad set of physiological principles, we are working towards building wearable devices that truly have physiology-in-the-loop.

We employ diverse approaches to study these multi-scale physiological principles.  In our muscle physiology lab, we are able to study how muscle mechanics and neural control interact with the sensory afferent system.  Through computer simulations, we use musculoskeletal modeling and optimization to develop hypotheses about the interaction of wearable devices and muscle tendon unit behavior.  And lastly, we use human participant experiments to understand the biomechanical and energetic effects of wearable devices at the whole-body level.