Gard Awarded Honorary Membership to the AAOP

April 1, 2008 -- Steven Gard, Ph.D., was awarded Honorary Membership by the American Academy of Orthotists and Prosthetists (AAOP) at the 2008 annual meeting held in Orlando, FL on February 28 to March 1.  The award is intended to recognize individuals who are closely allied with the prosthetic and orthotic profession, but are not ABC-certified practitioners.  The recipients of this award have demonstrated a very high level of knowledge and a dedication to the P&O field.

Steven A. Gard, Ph.D., delivers Blatchford Lecture

Dr. Gard (left) accepts the  Blatchford Award from John Howitt, Honorary Treasurer and Membership Secretary of the UK ISPO.

December 20, 2007 -- Steven A. Gard, Ph.D., was invited to speak as the Blatchford Lecturer for the 2007 Annual Scientific Meeting of the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO) and the British Healthcare Trades Association (BHTA) at Stoke-on-Trent, England in November.  Following the lecture, Mr. John Howitt, Honorary Treasurer and Membership Secretary of the UK ISPO presented the distinguished Blatchford Award to Steven A. Gard, Ph.D.

Dr. Gard presented “Functional Biomechanics of Gait, with Implications for Prosthetics Research” during which he identified the functional requirements of walking during able-bodied ambulation and related these functions to appropriate prostheses for those with a lower limb amputation. Emphasizing current research projects that are related to gait at Northwestern University Prosthetic Research Laboratory (NUPRL), Dr. Gard addressed issues that included shock absorption, gait initiation and termination, balance and posture, and energy efficient mechanisms for achieving and maintaining forward progression. He related these functional biomechanics of able-bodied walking to future improvements in prosthetic technologies that will enable persons with disability to walk with greater comfort, stability and efficiency.

Williams wins RESNA's student design competition

June 28, 2007 -- Ryan Williams, a graduate student here at NUPRL & RERP, was selected as a winner for the Student Design Competition at the 2007 Conference for the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA) held in Phoenix, AZ from June 15-19.  Almost forty teams submitted papers for the design competition, but only sixteen were selected as finalists.  Those sixteen were asked to present a paper at the conference, and five winners were selected from those presentations. 

The title of Ryan's winning paper was "Prosthetic Foot & Ankle Mechanism Capable of Automatic Adaptation to the Walking Surface." Here is a brief summary of his research:

This research explored the challenges that people using lower-limb prostheses experience when ambulating on sloped surfaces.  A prototype foot and ankle mechanism was designed, developed and tested on three subjects with unilateral transtibial amputations walking on level and ramped surfaces.  The mechanism is capable of automatically adapting to the walking surface by providing variable stiffness throughout the gait cycle.  The mechanism simulates the behavior of the physiologic foot and ankle complex by increasing the stiffness once foot-flat is reached and then reducing the stiffness directly after toe-off.  The “set-point,” at which these changes in stiffness occur, gets reset on every step in order to reach the proper alignment for the walking surface.  The mechanism utilizes the user’s body weight to control the ankle stiffness and does not require any active control.  Several steps would be needed to make the prototype into a commercial product, but the mechanism achieved the design goals and was sufficient for acquiring the necessary data.

McNealy wins AAAS Student Poster Competition

April 25, 2007 -- Lexyne McNealy, a graduate student, won the 2007 AAAS Student Poster Competition.  Her winning poster in the Science and Society category was entitled, "Prosthetic Ankle Motion in Bilateral Transfemoral Amputees."  Her award includes recognition in the April 20th issue of Science and a one-year subscription to Science magazine.

Fatone Awarded Honorary Membership to the AAOP

April 9, 2007 -- Stefania Fatone, Ph.D., was awarded Honorary Membership by the American Academy of Orthotists and Prosthetists (AAOP) at the 2007 annual meeting held in San Francisco on March 21-24.  The award is intended to recognize individuals who are closely allied with the prosthetic and orthotic profession, but are not ABC-certified practitioners.  The recipients of this award have demonstrated a very high level of knowledge and a dedication to the P&O field.  Other honorees included Sharon Hubbard, M.S., who also received honorary membership, John Michael, MEd, CPO, and Douglas Smith, MD, who received the Research Award, and Stan Patterson, CP, who received the Clinical Commitment Award.

PhD student awarded fellowship and travel grant

March 2, 2007 -- Angelika Zissimopoulos, MS, was recently awarded the Dr. John N. Nicholson Fellowship for 2007-2008.  This fellowship is named for Dr. John N. Nicholson, a Chicago area physician who established an endowment at Northwestern University to support graduate students in selected fields. The award is intended for PhD and MS students enrolled in the sciences or engineering and PhD students in management.  Preference is given to applicants of Greek extraction or descent.  Angelika was also awarded a Conference Travel Grant through the Northwestern University Graduate School, which provides funds to assist PhD and MFA students with the costs of traveling to conferences and/or seminars.  Angelika will be attending and presenting at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthotists and Prosthetists to be held in San Francisco, CA from March 21-24, 2007.