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Current Activities: I work in the Functional Electrical
Stimulation (FES) Center here at Case. The goal of this center is to artificially
stimulate paralyzed muscles with implanted electrodes to restore function to people
with spinal cord injury, stroke and other muscluloskeletal disorders. My specific
project is clinical implementation of a nerve based electrode that will be part of
a neuroprosthesis system to restore arm movement to people that can only shrug
their shoulders now (C3/C4 tetraplegia).
Why Case? Hands down I came here for the FES Center.
After reading about electrical stimulation on-line (I did a Google search) I decided
that was what I wanted to do. Case BME has been around forever and several of the
pioneers of FES technology came from Case, and some are still here! We have the
capability to take a new concept from the initial idea, through development and
animal testing, fabricate human quality devices in our technical development
laboratory and perform clinical trials at one of our several collaborating hospitals
in Cleveland.
Advice for Applicants:
I came to Case during the summer prior to my first semester of coursework, and I
had the opportunity to rotate through different research laboratories. I had narrowed down my
interest to two professors and moved to Cleveland in June to start "work".
Basically this gave me the opportunity to meet current students and get to know
how things worked at Case and in Cleveland before the rush of classes started.
During that time I also decided that I wanted to work with Dr. Kirsch and do more
clinically oriented research rather than animal or modeling research.
The opportunity to start research during the summer or at other times depends on the type of research
and other circumstances. For example, a few of my colleagues have even started their graduate careers
at the start of the spring academic semester in January, which best suited their needs. These are just
some of the examples of how the Department of Biomedical Engineering can offer the flexibility needed
to meet our long-term career goals.
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