Grand Rounds Seminar

This presentation will explore community engagement through a variety of personal and professional viewpoints. The discussion will highlight Lee’s professional experience as a physical therapist with the Indian Health Service and US Public Health Service, and overview their personal experience of growing up on and near American Indian reservations in Arizona. Lee will discuss the process of unlearning implicit and explicit biases, and how personal identity factors shape community work. The presentation delves into how to harness the journeys of self-reflection, professional discovery, and community collaboration to strengthen the future of the physical therapy profession.

PACE Day Schedule: 

Presentation with Lee Ryder, PT, DPT, MPH ('18)
12:00-1:00 PM CST
Department of Physical Therapy & Human Movement Sciences
*8th floor (in-person & online via Zoom)

Community & Service Work Presentations Presented by 2nd-year DPT Students
1:00-3:00 PM CST
Department of Physical Therapy & Human Movement Sciences
*7th floor (in-person)

Dr. DeVol's long term goal is to combine transcutaneous spinal stimulation and high-density electroencephalography to better design electrical stimulation therapies for individuals with neurological injuries. Transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation (tSCS) has emerged as a non-invasive neuromodulation technique. Applying tSCS during walking can reduce muscle co-contraction, improve joint coordination, and reduce muscle fatigue in children with cerebral palsy (CP). Several sessions of tSCS paired with physical therapy may also lead to lasting effects on mobility and function by driving neuroplastic changes in the nervous system. As research advances, clinicians and scientists are studying how to best integrate tSCS into rehabilitative care to maximize functional benefits. Understanding the underlying neurological mechanisms of tSCS may give valuable insight for determining how to optimize its use during physical training. High-density, mobile electroencephalography (EEG) offers a promising approach to measure the brain during movement and use of tSCS. Mobile EEG has been used to measure cortical responses during balance tasks, walking on even terrain, playing table tennis, and changes in sensory information during walking. Together, these approaches offer a framework for integrating neural biomarkers into rehabilitation, with the goal of optimizing gait interventions for individuals with neuromotor impairments.on.

About Charlotte R. DeVol, PhD: Dr. Charlotte R.DeVol is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida, where she studies brain dynamics in older adults with mobility decline. Her research focuses on developing and understanding novel interventions to improve mobility and function in individuals with neurological injury. Dr. DeVol earned her PhD in 2024 from the University of Washington, working with Dr. Katherine M. Steele and Dr. Chet T. Moritz. Her dissertation examined the biomechanical and clinical effects of non-invasive spinal cord stimulation as a therapeutic intervention for children with cerebral palsy. Bridging neuroscience, rehabilitation, and engineering, Dr. DeVol’s work aims to quantify how the nervous system responds to innovative therapies to inform more effective, individualized approaches to clinical care. She is a recipient of the 2019 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the Translational Research in Aging and Mobility NIH T32 Fellowship at the University of Florida.