People

Antonie J. (Ton) van den Bogert

Dr. van den Bogert currently holds the Parker-Hannifin Endowed Chair in Human Motion and Control in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Cleveland State University. He has previously been on the faculty at the University of Calgary (1993-1998) and the Cleveland Clinic (1998-2010). Current research interests: control of powered prosthetics and orthotics, and prediction of human performance via computational modeling.

Huawei Wang

Huawei received his Bachelor Degree of Engineering at the Civil Aviation University of China in 2012 and a Master Degree of Control Theory and Engineering in Beihang University in 2015. He worked in the Robotics and Automation Lab at Tsinghua University for a year, gaining experiences in human push recovery strategies and intelligent control system design for transfemoral prostheses. He is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at Cleveland State, with an interest in control identification in human motion and intelligent controllers for transfemoral prostheses.

Projects: Identification of Human Control during Standing and Walking

Nicole Strah

Nicole received her Bachelor in Physics and Astronomy from Pittsburgh in 2011 and her Master of Physics from Cleveland State in 2013. She is back to teach Physics and continue her education in Mechanical Engineering, and she will be doing validation studies for muscle force estimations.

Farbod Rohani

Farbod is pursuing his doctoral degree in electrical engineering at Cleveland State University (CSU). He received his master’s degree in electrical engineering from California State University, Chico, and his bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering in Iran. His research interests include control systems, human motion, robotics, energy regeneration, optimization algorithms and biomechanics.

Projects: Predictive Simulation of Rowing Exercise

Raviraj Nataraj

Raviraj was a Postdoctoral Research Associate investigating feedback control of gait. He has previously performed clinical research involving restoration of standing following spinal cord injury and investigation of hand sensorimotor control at the Louis Stokes VAMC and the Cleveland Clinic. He has received postgraduate degrees in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering from Stanford University and Case Western Reserve University. His primary research interests include identification of biomechanical control principles and developing rehabilitation applications.

Projects: Optimal Linear Feedback Control of Walking

Jason K. Moore

Jason received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in 2012 where he investigated how humans balance and control bicycles. His research at the Human Motion and Control lab focused on studying how humans walk and run from a control perspective. His interests include multibody dynamics, system identification, biomechanics, bicycle dynamics, reproducible computational science, and open science.

Projects: Identification of Human Control during Walking

Milad Zarei

Milad received his master's degree in Mechanical Engineering at Cleveland State University. He graduated in July 2016, and works as a research engineer at University of Pittsburgh. His research interests include human motion, clinical biomechanics, musculoskeletal modeling, simulation, and sports and exercise science.

Projects: Predictive Simulation of Rowing Exercise, Gait Optimization using GPOPS-II

Ben Baldwin

Ben graduated from Western Michigan University in 1997 and went to work for Parker Aerospace as a hydraulics engineer. Except for a 2 year period, he has been with various divisions of Parker through the present. His primary role has been as a project engineer on commercial and military aerospace programs. Over the last year and a half he has transitioned into the analysis department at the Aircraft Wheel & Brake Division. This choice has allowed him to branch out and work on his skills as a stress analyst and programmer. He is currently working on an MSME degree at CSU that focuses on control theory and hopes to be finished in December 2014. His interests include controls, robotics, muscle cars and sci fi.

Samin Askarian

Samin obtained a Master of Mechanical Engineering at Cleveland State University. Her undergrad degree is from University of Tehran in the same field. Her research focused on numerical modeling of human body balance by modeling it with a two link inverted pendulum. Her interests include system identification and numerical methods to solve stochastic differential equations.

Project: Methods for Identification of Feedback Control During Standing

Obinna Nwanna

Obinna received a Master of Biomedical Engineering from Cleveland State University. His undergrad degree is from Case Western Reserve University in the same field. His thesis focused on accelerometry based methods for human gait analysis. Obinna's interests include biomechanics, neural engineering, human performance and rehabilitation, falconeering, and robotic prostheses.

Project: Validation of an Accelerometry Based Method of Human Gait Analysis

Brad Humphreys

Brad received his Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from The Ohio State University in 1998.  Since that time he has worked in the aerospace industry for Boeing, Goodrich, and currently for ZIN Technologies (at NASA Glenn Research Center).  Some of the projects he has contributed to include the next generation of Boeing 737s, Bombardier Challenger 300, International Space Station, and Ares I Rocket.  For 10 years he worked in new aircraft/spacecraft development; he specialized in controls, instrumentation, structural design, and flight test. For the past several years he has been involved in modeling of exercise, human performance, and dynamics during spaceflight.

Sandra (Sandy) Hnat

Sandra received her Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from Cleveland State University in 2013. Her work at the HMC lab focused on a neuromuscular reflex controller for a powered exoskeleton. She graduated with her doctoral degree from Cleveland State in May 2018, and went to Cleveland VA Medical Center as a postdoc.

Projects: Neuromuscular Reflex Control, Evaluation of Virtual Muscles on a Powered Exoskeleton, Inertial Compensation for Belt Acceleration in Moving Force Plates, Inertial Compensation for Belt Acceleration in an Instrumented Treadmill

Anne Koelewijn

Anne received her bachelor in Aerospace Engineering from Delft University of Technology in 2011 and finished her Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2014. She is currently pursuing a Doctor of Engineering degree at Cleveland State University. Her interests include robotics, human motion, control and lacrosse. She graduated with her doctoral degree from Cleveland State in June 2018 and went to BioRobotics Lab in EPFL as a postdoc.

Projects: Applications of Predictive Simulations of Gait, Predictive Simulations in a Stochastic Environment, Minimization of Metabolic Cost in Gait

Roman Boychuk

Roman obtained an Undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering in May 2014. As an intern, he has worked for Parker Hannifin Corporation and MAGNET for a total of four rotations. He was enrolled in the 4+1 Program and is currently pursuing a Masters in Mechanical Engineering.

Sabrina Abram

Sabrina obtained a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from Cleveland State University in May 2015. She has previously worked as an intern with Plexar Imaging, where she specialized in image quality analysis of CT scanners. She was also a member of the Honors Program and the captain of the Women’s Soccer team at Cleveland State University.

Keyaira Crudup

Keyaira is currently pursuing her Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a member of both the Honors College and  the Chancellor's Science Scholars Program. Her research in the Human Motion and Control laboratory focused on validating muscle force predictions by investigating the load sharing between two arms working in synergy during a bilateral biceps curl. Her research interests include powered prothetics, human motion, and rehabilitation technologies.

Marcus Jones

Marcus is currently pursuing his Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering at Cleveland State University. He works in the Mathematics department as a coordinator for Operation STEM. His research at the Human Motion and Control lab focuses on analyzing human motion while slipping.

Michael Frawley

Michael is currently pursuing his Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering and his Bachelor of Physics at Cleveland State University. He's previously interned at the NASA Glenn Research Center, doing research on high-temperature materials for use in gas turbine propulsion systems. His research at the Human Motion and Control lab focuses on comparing static optimization and computed muscle control to EMG. His research interests include powered exoskeleton technologies, human motion, robotics, and brain-computer interface technologies.

Farzad Ehtemam

Farzad joined the lab as a visiting graduate student in spring 2017. His work in the lab focused on system identification of human walking during mechanical perturbations of the treadmill. Farzad's background is in mechanical and biomedical engineering and his research interests are in the areas of human movement control, signal processing, control theory, evolutionary computing and data science.