News and Events
- Congrats to our NREL undergraduate students for finishing their research training in 2024. Four undergraduate students at NREL presented their research in BME Retreat/Joint BME 20th Birthday.
- Samuel Duncan won the 2024 BME Retreat Poster Award! (Samuel is mentored by Abbas Alili)
-
- Dezmun Roper-Bryant’s paper is accepted by IEEE EMBC 2024! (Dezmum is mentored by Joseph Berman)
- Dr. Huang appointed to Editor-in-Chief of IEEE TNSRE
- Congratulations to Dr. Woolim Hong for receiving prestigious NIDILRR Switzer Fellowship!
- Congratulations to Joseph Berman for receiving NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F31)!!
- Helen and EJ discussed their perspective on AI applications in robotic prostheses on Science Magazine. Here is the article “Artificial intelligence meets medical robotics“.
- Varun Nalam, Brendan Driscoll, and Helen Huang were invited to give an American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) tech demo at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIH NIBIB) Discoveries in Technology event on June 27th. 2023.
- Noah Rubin successfully passed his final Ph.D. defense in May 2023. Congratulations to Dr. Rubin!!
- Our undergraduate student, Nita Prabhu, received highest honor for her Senior Honors Thesis in the lab. Congratulations!
- Our lab member Dr. Qiang Zhang will joint the University of Alabama as an Assistant Professor in the coming fall of 2023! Congratulations!
- Our former Ph.D student, Dr. Yue Wen, will become an Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida in Fall 2023. Congratulations!
- NREL received IBM funding to support our project “Increasing the reach of wearable robotics: Improving healthcare equity for people with mobility related disabilities” and workforce development in AI and Robotics. Thanks to the IBM Center for Advanced Studies– RTP.
- Congratulations to Noah Rubin for winning 2021-2022 BME Graduate Student Service Award!
- Dr. Huang elevated to IEEE Fellow in 2023.
- Congratulations to Wentao Liu for receiving NCSU/UNC BME PhD Student Research Achievement Award!
- Minhan Li and Robert Hinson successfully passed their final Ph.D. defense in May 2022. Congratulations to Dr. Li and Dr. Hinson!! Dr. Li will join Argo AI in California; Dr. Hinson will continue his last 2 years of MD training in the UNC MD/Ph.D. program.
- Congratulations to Austin Mituniewicz for his NSF GRPF award!
- Congratulations to Noah Rubin, who won the 3rd place in the Engineering Section of the graduate student research symposium! [Link]
- Congratulations to Dr. Fleming and Dr. Fylstra! Two new doctors from NREL in 2021.
- Our research on neural control of robotic prosthesis ankle for improved postural stability is featured by NIH NIBIB (link).
- Our collaborative paper with Prof. Jon Stallrich at the Department of Statistics won the Statistics in Physical Engineering Sciences Award (SPES Award) from the American Statistical Association (ASA) (https://www.amstat.org/ASA/Your-Career/Awards/Statistics-in-Physical-Engineering-Sciences-Award.aspx ).
- Congratulations to Chinmay who successfully completed his MS. in Oct 2021.
- Prof. Ming Liu received NIH R21 grant. He will collaborate with Dr. Michael Dickey at NC State to develop a novel inner socket sensor. Congratulations!
- Congratulations to Fiona who successfully completed her MS. in March 2021! She will join Dephy this fall.
- Our team, led by Dr. Varun Nalam, is the finalist for the WearRA Innovation Challenge competition in 2021. You can see our pitched idea here http://www.wearablerobotics.com/wearracon-21-registration/innovation-challenge/
- Prof. Huang received the Alcoa Foundation Distinguished Engineering Research Award in 2021
- Prof. Huang is elected as AIMBE fellow. Appointmemt is given to the top 2% of medical & biological engineers & it is one of the highest professional distinctions in this field. Congratulations!
- Bretta Fylstra unconditionally passed her preliminary qualify exam for her Ph.D. program on 11/06/20.
- Congratulations to Sameer who successfully completed his MS. in Oct 2020.
- Congratulations to Boxuan who successfully completed his Ph.D. in May 2020. He will join Facebook in the fall of 2020. Good luck, Dr. Zhong!
- Dr. Huang named to the Jackson Family Distinguished Professor!
- AOPA recently featured Dr. Huang and NREL on the December issue of O&P Almanac
- Our lab members from the ECE department introduce NREL
- Aaron Fleming unconditionally passed his preliminary qualify exam for his Ph.D. program on 12/06/19. Congratulations! He also recently received his NIH F31 grant. His last phase of Ph.D. program in the lab will be supported by NIH.
- Dr. Yue Wen joined Shirley Ryan Ability Lab as a post-doc associate. Good luck, Dr. Wen!
- Dr. Lizhi Pan accepted the associate professor position at Tian Jing University. Congratulations!
- Congratulations to Aaron Fleming for winning the 3rd place in the poster competition at ICORR 2019!
- Yue Wen and Andrea Brandt successfully defended their Ph.D. Theses in March 2019. Congratulations Dr. Wen and Dr. Brandt!!
- NREL recently hosted its first annual Open House where local clinicians from all over the Triangle participated in live demonstrations and discussions. We enjoyed learning from clinical perspectives and sharing our research vision, and we look forward to continuing to build collaborative relationships to deepen our research expertise and widen our reach in restoring mobility to persons with amputation.
- New Tech May Make Prosthetic Hands Easier for Patients to Use. The article is available on NC State’s website. The article features novel a neural-machine intreface that is generic to different amputee users for robotic prosthesis control. The article is also featured at the website of UNC, Science Daily,NSF Science 360, NAE Frontier, etc.
- Study Shows Need for Adaptive Powered Knee Prosthesis to Assist Amputees. The article is available on NC State’s website. The article features Andrea Brandt’s research that investigates how weight loads and powered prosthesis control affect the amputees’ gait performance. The article is also featured at NSF Science, Science Daily, etc.
- Our Research Scientist, Dr. Dustin Crouch, has accepted a tenure-track faculty position at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. While we will be sad to see him leave, we wish him all the best in his endeavors as a Tennessee Volunteer!
- Anna Winslow and David Lee were featured in the Spring/Summer 2017 Edition of NC State Engineering Magazine. During Homecoming in late October 2016, they presented an overview of our lab’s research to College of Engineering Alumni and demonstrated the use of our upper limb prosthesis with an able-bodied adapter. The article is available on NC State’s College of Engineering website, as well as on page 36 of the printed publication (PDF).
- NCSU Chancellor Randy Woodson and College of Engineering Dean Louis Martin-Vega stopped by our lab in March 2017 to see our latest research. It seems like they enjoyed their visit!
- Congratulations to Yue Wen! His EMBC paper, entitled ‘Adaptive control of powered transfemoral prostheses based on adaptive dynamic programming‘ is one of finalists in the Student Paper Competition at IEEE EMBC 2016.
- Interested candidates are encouraged to submit a curriculum vitae, a 1-page research statement, selected publications, and three references. To learn more about our research or to submit an application, please contact us: nrel.ncsu@gmail.com.
- Dustin Crouch participated in NC Science Festival’s Invite-a-Scientist Program where he discussed his research at Cleveland Middle School in Garner, NC.
- New Tech Automatically ‘Tunes’ Powered Prosthetics While Walking, with Matt Shipman at NC State University, 2015. This news was highlighted on the front page of NSF.gov.
- Dustin Crouch was selected to present his research publicly at the Nature Research Center in Raleigh, NC as part of National Postdoc Week on September 23, 2015.
- Dr. Huang was one of 89 engineers selected to participate in NAE’s 2015 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium.
- Researchers Study Impact of Power Prosthetic Failures on Amputees, with Matt Shipman at NC State University, 2014.
- Our group’s work was in UNC-TV’s North Carolina Now news program on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2014. Please check their website, click on “Watch Video” after selecting “A Profile of North Carolina State University.”
- Dr. Helen Huang’s work on brain-connected prostheses has once again made an apperance in the press. In late January, both the Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News and Observer reported on Dr. Huang’s development of smarter prostheses that utilize brain signals to help deal with changes in terrain, speed, and type of activity. The goal of Huang’s work is to program a bionic leg to response to specific brain activity patterns associated with a specific command, such as bending the knee. Congratulations to Professor Huang on the well-deserved publicity!
- “Helen Huang and her colleagues at N.C. State and UNC-Chapel Hill are building a smarter, safer bionic leg that “listens” to the user’s body and figures out what he or she has in mind before that person takes the next step.”, on The News & Observer, January 26, 2014.
- Researchers Seek to Control Prosthetic Legs with Neural Signals,with Matt Shipman at NC State University, 2013.
Also see NCSU researchers earn grant to develop brain-connected prosthetics, with Jason deBruyn at Triangle Business Journal, and the article, at the O&P Edge, 2013. - Our article, entitled “Recent developments in biofeedback for neuromotor rehabilitation“, ranks as the #6 all-time most viewed article in Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, 2013.
- Our article, entitled “A strategy for identifying locomotion modes using surface electromyography” is one of the most cited articles in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 2013.
- URI Professor Awarded Grant for Powered Prosthetics Research. The O&P Edge, June 6, 2012.
Also see URI Professor gets $520K NSF grant, with Patricia Resende at Mass High Tech, and URI article, with Todd McLeish. - Research puts people on their feet, College of Engineering, University of Rhode Island, March 2012.
- Safer, Smarter Legs, Rhode Island, Science and Technology Advisory Council, Jan 2011.
- URI awarded $12.3 million in research grants through Federal Stimulus Act, with Todd McLeish, December, 8, 2009.
- Researcher Trips Amputees In Effort To Develop Improved Prosthetic Legs, ScienceDaily, September 16, 2009. (Video)
- STAC awards $1.5M in research grants, with Ted Nesi, PBN, Jan 28, 2009.
Also see STAC news: STAC Awards 23 Scientists, 10 Institutions Funding for Collaborative Projects - URI biomedical engineer wins 2008 Delsys Prize, with Susan Baird, PBN, Oct 28 2008
Also see 2008 Delsys Prize Winner (Delsys.com), Huang wins prize for EMG/lower-limb research, (The O&P Edge, November 17, 2008). - Thinking Makes It So: Science Extends Reach Of Prosthetic Arms, ScienceDaily, November 12, 2007.