In the Summer of 2010 I returned to the University of Twente as an Assistant Professor to continue my work on neuro-rehabilitation robotics. I'm involved in several projects for the upper and lower extremities, and am also integrating automated TMS into our skill set.
Before, I worked in the lab of Jules Dewald at the Physical Therapy & Human Movement Sciences department at Northwestern University, Chicago. There I used rehabilitation robotics to investigate the relationship between hyperactive reflexes and the loss of independent joint control in the upper limbs of stroke patients. I still have an adjunct position at Northwestern and return there twice a year to strengthen the collaboration between the University of Twente and Northwestern University.
In January of 2009, I successfully defended my PhD thesis on Biomechtronic Engineering at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. During my PhD, I explored and creating rehabilitation robotics for the upper limb. This resulted in three novel rehabilitation devices: one weigh support system (Freebal, currently sold by Hocoma as the Armeo Boom) and two shoulder and elbow exoskeletons (Dampace and Limpact).
In 2003, I completed my MSc degree in Mechanical Engineering with a specialization in Control Engineering and Mechatronics for Biomedical Engineering at the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. In my two master projects, I used artificial, biological-inspired neural networks to simulate information handling in a small layer in the visual cortex (with the research done at the TU-Berlin) and to simulate the spinal reflex network in a neuromusculoskeletal model of the human arm.
Feel free to get in touch via . A list of recent publications can be found here.
Freebal (top left) - Dampace (top right) - Limpact (bottom)
Past and present research groups: