Mahnan receiving award at Emerging Medical Innovation Valuation Competition
Arash Mahnan, School of Kinesiology PhD student in movement science and member of the Human Sensorimotor Control Laboratory (HSCL), was busy last week winning $15,000 in a medical innovation competition and presenting his research.
Mahnan received third place in the Emerging Medical Innovation Valuation Competition held April 16 at McNamara Alumni Center as part of the Design of Medical Devices 2019 conference. This competition is a way for researchers and inventors to get immediate feedback about their projects from leaders in medical technology research, engineering and development. The top three presenters are awarded a full valuation from the U’s Medical Industry Valuation Laboratory, which generally charges $15,000 for this service.
On April 18, Mahnan presented at the conference on the development of his device for the treatment of voice disorder spasmodic dysphonia. Mahnan wrote the paper with Kinesiology professor Jürgen Konczak, PhD.
And on April 19, Mahnan presented a poster on the recent work in the HSCL on finding a new treatment for voice disorder spasmodic dysphonia at the 7th Minnesota Neuromodulation Symposium held in Minneapolis.
Mahnan presenting poster at 7th Minnesota Neuromodulation Symposium
Yonghwan Chang, PhD,School of Kinesiology assistant professor in sport management, has been recognized as a 2019 North American Society for Sport Management (NASSM) Research Fellow. This designation recognizes NASSM’s scholars by honoring their achievements in sport-related scholarship disseminated through NASSM. Being recognized as a NASSM Research Fellow is intended to be a distinction within NASSM and Fellows’ and other academic communities, and is intended to encourage high standards of research and other forms of scholarship among NASSM’s members.
“I wanted to apply for the NASSM Research Fellow Award because it is the only research distinction given by the field’s largest professional society,” Chang said. “I have such caring colleagues and mentors surrounding me in the School of Kinesiology. It would have been impossible without their support. I can’t even begin to express my thanks for their mentorship and guidance!”
Chang has been with the University of Minnesota since 2017. His research interests are sport marketing and consumer behavior, with an emphasis on experiential consumption and sport sponsorship.
Chang aims to provide an improved understanding of consumers’ decision-making processes as well as the benefits and values of sport experiences. He explores a variety of experiential consumption areas such as luxury services, spectator sports, and social media. The primary objective of his sport sponsorship research is to identify the complex network of brand associations stored in consumers’ memory in order to optimize desirable consumption outcomes.
“We want to congratulate Dr. Chang on this major accomplishment,” said Beth Lewis, director of the School of Kinesiology. “It is a high honor and it incredible that Dr. Chang has already received this distinction so early in his career.
Wiese-Bjornstal published a chapter in Volume 1: Sport Psychology titled “Psychological Predictors and Consequences of Injuries in Sport Settings.” Lewis and Schuver co-published the chapter titled “Primary Research Dimensions of Exercise Psychology,” in Volume 2: Exercise Psychology.
The APA Handbook of Sport and Exercise Psychology presents new areas of research and links theory with emerging practice to reflect the latest developments in this constantly changing field.
The 77 chapters provide extensive coverage of conceptual frameworks and models, empirical findings, and practical interventions. Additionally, many chapters discuss topics not addressed in other publications, such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, sleep disorders, life-span engagement in sport and physical activity, and professional ethics and governance.
School of Kinesiology doctoral student Christopher Curry presented a research poster at the Design of Medical Devices Conference, the world’s largest medical device conference. His research poster was titled “3D Anthropometric Assessment of Functional Hand Grasps for Surgeons and Medical Professionals.”
Curry worked with Linsey Griffin, PhD, and Emily Seifert, an MS student in Apparel Studies, both from the College of Design. Their collaborative project discussed the importance of anthropometrics in product design, more specifically focused on surgeons.
Curry is pictured above with a digital version of his research poster.
At the SHAPE America national conference doctoral student DJ McDonough was awarded the 2019 SHAPE America Research Council Graduate Student Research Award for the top-ranked abstract submitted among graduate students for his poster presentation. PAEL director and associate professor at the School of Kinesiology,Zan Gao, PhD, and doctoral student Wenxi Liu both presented research posters, and Gao’s former advisee, June Lee, PhD, presented a first-author oral presentation which was funded by SHAPE America.
At the ICSPAH international conference doctoral students McDonough and Xiwen Su were awarded Outstanding Oral Presentation awards; Liu gave an oral research presentation and was awarded the ICSPAH Professional Service Award for his 1-year service as Student Representative; and Gao was awarded the ICSPAH Excellent Leadership Service Award for his 3-year service as the President-Elect, President, and Immediate Past President of the Society from 2017 -2019.
Christopher Curry, a doctoral student in the School of Kinesiology, has been awarded a renewal of his NSF-funded fellowship based on his strong interest in interdisciplinary research. Curry received a 2018-19 NSF-funded fellowship last year. This 2019-20 award will continue to fund his new research focusing on cybersickness in virtual reality.
The NSF-funded fellowship is awarded through the Center for Cognitive Sciences and the Center for Applied and Translational Sensory Science. The 12-month stipend of $34,000 provides comprehensive funding through the center’s training grant titled “NRT-UtB: Graduate training program in sensory science: Optimizing the information available for mind and brain.”
Thomas Stoffregen, PhD, professor of movement science in the School of Kinesiology and Victoria Interrante, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering are serving as Curry’s fellowship mentors.
The MNDrive (Minnesota Discovery, Research and InnoVation Economy) award will cover Mahnan for up to $70,000 in stipend, benefits, and tuition over one year. This fellowship funding, in conjunction with potential grant-funded partnerships with the National Spasmodic Dysphonia Association (NSDA) and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s (CTSI) Office of Discovery and Translation (ODAT), will help Mahnan continue his work on the development of a non-invasive neuromodulation medical device for treatment of the voice disorder spasmodic dysphonia (SD).
SD is a voice disorder that leads to strained or choked speech. It is considered a rare disease, with an estimated 50,000 people affected in the United States. There are two types of SD, adductor SD and abductor SD, each affecting speech in a slightly different way. Although it can start at any time during life, SD seems to begin more often when people are middle-aged and remains for the rest of their life. There is no cure for those affected with SD.
The HSC lab’s preliminary work has shown that voice quality in SD improves when vibrotactile stimulation (VTS), vibration used to affect a tactile sensation, is applied to the larynx. This is a non-invasive form of neuromodulation, defined by the International Neuromodulation Society as “the alteration of nerve activity through targeted delivery of a stimulus, such as electrical stimulation or chemical agents, to specific neurological sites in the body.” Neuromodulation, a growing class of therapies, has been in use since the 1980s, and can help restore function or relieve symptoms that have a neurological basis. SD patients need a device that applies VTS and can be worn during daily life. Mahnan’s project seeks to design and build such a device and to test it with a sample of patients. For this effort to succeed, the project requires close collaboration among engineers, motor control scientists and voice disorder clinicians.
Over the past year, Mahnan has designed and developed the first generation model of this wearable device. Currently, he is helping lead research in a three-year clinical trial at HSC lab supported by NIH to investigate the long-term effect of VTS on patients with adductor SD. Additionally, he has presented his work at multiple conferences in both the medical and movement disorder fields. In April, he will present his research at the 2019 Design of Medical Devices Conference (DMD), the world’s largest premiere medical devices conference. He will also present his device at the DMD’s Emerging Medical Innovation Valuation Competition. Winners of this competition are awarded a full device valuation from the UMN’s Medical Industry Valuation Laboratory (the regular fee for this service is $15,000).
Mahnan’s MnDRIVE Fellowship award will allow him to develop and test a second generation of the wearable device to treat SD, and to hold a second clinical trial, this time focusing on patients affected by abductor SD.
“Because this disease is classified as a rare disease, most large medical companies don’t want to devote the time and money into the research required to develop a treatment,” Mahnan said. “I am excited to move this technology forward. My goal is to make it real, to eventually bring the device to the market, and to help SD patients to get their voice back.”
Awards are funded by the Brain Conditions core area of the MnDRIVE initiative. Fellowships are awarded to an outstanding individual trainee or trainee team that has a translational- and neuromodulation-focused research topic with high commercial potential and a strong collaboration with an industry partner. This funding is intended to equip trainees with unique seed funds and to help foster University-industry collaborations that seek to deliver neuromodulation discoveries and innovations with high commercial potential.
Awards are funded by the Brain Conditions core area of the MnDRIVE initiative. Fellowships are awarded to an outstanding individual trainee or trainee team that has a translational- and neuromodulation-focused research topic with high commercial potential and a strong collaboration with an industry partner. This funding is intended to equip trainees with unique seed funds and to help foster University-industry collaborations that seek to deliver neuromodulation discoveries and innovations with high commercial potential.
The publication found that in the tested population, age was negatively associated with peak aerobic capacity and oxygen cost with body mass scaled allometrically. Aerobic capacity declines with age, but there may be sex differences in age-related alterations to submaximal running.
School of Kinesiology professor and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory (APAL)Thomas Stoffregen, PhD, collaborated with choreographer Pramila Vasudevan, Aniccha Arts and the Weisman Art Museum to create “#1 of 30.” This Collaboration Incubator project explores the phenomenon of bodily sway and motion, and was inspired by Stoffregen’s research about body sway: the innate movement of the body that occurs even when standing still.
The School of Kinesiology’s Physical Activity Epidemiology Laboratory (PAEL) team and director Zan Gao, PhD, associate professor of physical activity and health, have published a book chapter, “Progress and possibilities for technology integration in CSPAP” in a book titled Comprehensive School Physical Activity Programs, published by Human Kinetics. The chapter details emerging technologies in physical activity promotion and offers evidence-based recommendations and applications for practice for all stakeholders in comprehensive school physical activity programs.
Co-authors include Gao’s past advisees Zachary Pope, PhD, Nan Zeng, PhD, and June Lee, PhD, and current PhD advisee, DJ McDonough.
Left to right: Gao, Pope, Zeng, McDonough, and Lee.
Jessica Holst-Wolf, PhD, postdoctoral researcher in the Human Sensorimotor and Control Laboratory (HSCL) in the School of Kinesiology, is the lead author of a recent article published in Frontiers of Psychology.
The article describes an assessment to measure haptic function, which is our perception of objects, such as their texture and shape, that we explore with our hands. Haptic loss severely compromises the fine motor control of our hands and impairs many daily manual tasks. Today, no widely accepted assessments protocols of haptic function are in clinical use, due primarily to the scarcity of fast, objective measures capable of characterizing mild to severe forms of haptic dysfunction with appropriate resolution. This new test introduces a novel curvature-perception assessment system called the Minnesota Haptic Function Test™ that seeks to overcome the shortcomings of current clinical assessments.
The article’s other authors include Yu-Ting Tseng, PhD, another former lab member and currently assistant professor of National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, and Jürgen Konczak, PhD, professor and director of the HSCL.
Maureen R Weiss, PhD, professor of psychology of physical activity at the School of Kinesiology, and representative for the National Academy of Kinesiology, will speak at a public listening session hosted by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop a National Strategy on Youth Sports, on Thursday April 4, in Washington DC.
Weiss and Daniel Gould, PhD, director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports and a professor of kinesiology at Michigan State University, will lead off the session by discussing the current state of youth sports in the United States, including historical, research, and applied approaches. National youth sport organizations will participate on panels throughout the remainder of the day to address strategies to enhance benefits and reduce barriers of participation, recruit and train coaches, and create innovative approaches to youth sports.
Congratulations to School of Kinesiology Human Sensorimotor Control (HSC) Lab members Jessica Holst-Wolf, PhD, and Arash Mahnan, on their research presentations at the 2019 CEHD Research Day event.
Holst-Wolf, a post-doctoral association in the HSC Lab, presented a research poster showcasing her work in characterizing chemotherapy related somatosensory impairment in children. Learn more about her work here.
Mahnan, a doctoral student at the School of Kinesiology, participated in CEHD’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. His presentation highlighted his current research about Laryngeal vibration as a treatment for spasmodic dysphonia. Learn more about his work here.
Sports Management Degree Guide’s mission is to share expert knowledge on high-quality accredited degree programs in sports management at the nation’s best universities. To identify the twenty most affordable sport management doctoral programs, the Degree Guide consulted College Navigator and the North American Society for Sport Management (NASSM), the premiere professional organization in the field, to get a comprehensive list of universities offering PhD sport management programs in the U.S. They then looked at the average graduate tuition rates to determine the most affordable programs.
The School of Kinesiology’s PhD program with an emphasis in sport management provides academic excellence by combining theoretical instruction and practical experience to prepare tomorrow’s leaders for success in the sports industry and marketplace. Students develop the tools of research and learn core concepts through an interdisciplinary curriculum with an emphasis on cultivating new ideas and improving operations in the sport industry. The School of Kinesiology is ranked sixth in the nation among kinesiology doctoral programs reviewed by NAK in 2014. Learn more about the program and faculty here >>>
Maureen Weiss, PhD, professor in the School of Kinesiology, was referenced in an article on the Girls on the Run SoleMates program recently published in NWIndianaLife.com. The program sponsors charity running events to raise money to support the popular youth program.
Dr. Weiss, who conducted a 2017 study on the effects of the program, found that Girls on the Run can promote positive youth development in the areas of competence, confidence, connection, character, caring, physical activity, and life skills. The study also found that Girls on the Run makes a stronger impact than organized sports and physical education programs in teaching life skills, demonstrating that strategies such as those for managing emotions, resolving conflict, helping others, and making intentional decisions are optimized when they are explicitly taught.
On March 21, 2019 Lisa A. Kihl, PhD, associate professor of sport management at the School of Kinesiology spoke at Loughborough University London’s campus as a part of the external research series. Kihl’s talk, “Generating a meaningful athlete voice in sport governance,” was based on current research exploring the meaning of athlete representation and governance structures that can generate an effective athlete voice in sport governing bodies.
The Loughborough University London’s external research series talks are delivered by internationally-recognized academics, and are meant to give an insight into the latest findings and discoveries across a broad range of disciplines and topics.
Yu-Ting Tseng, PhD, a graduate of the School of Kinesiology and member of the Human Sensorimotor Control (HSC) Lab, Jürgen Konczak, PhD, professor in Kinesiology and HSC Lab director, and Jessica Holst-Wolf, PhD, postdoctoral associate in the HSC Lab along with colleagues from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan published research in Neuropsychologia.
The article, “Haptic perception is altered in children with developmental coordination disorder,” examined whether haptic perception, which relies on somatosensory afferents, is impaired in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). DCD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects coordination and motor function in children but may affect the somatosensory system as well. The researchers measured somatosensation with a haptic test where children made judgments about the shape of blocks after exploring the shapes by touch, not using vision. They found that children with DCD demonstrate haptic dysfunction compared with typically developing children and this haptic measure correlates with a standard clinical measure of motor function.
Beth Lewis, PhD, professor and director of the School of Kinesiology and director of the Exercise & Mental Health Laboratory (EMHL) has been selected by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to serve as a member of the Psychosocial Risk and Disease Prevention Study Section, Center for Scientific Review. Her term will begin July 1, 2019 and end June 30, 2023.
Members review grant applications submitted to the NIH, make recommendations on these applications to the appropriate NIH national advisory council or board, and survey the status of research in their fields of science. These functions are viewed to have great value to medical and allied research in this country. Lewis was selected on the basis of her demonstrated competence and achievements in her scientific discipline as evidenced by the quality of research accomplishments, publications in scientific journals, and other significant scientific activities, achievements and honors. Membership represents a major commitment of professional time and energy as well as a unique opportunity to contribute to the national biomedical research effort.
“I want to take this opportunity to emphasize the importance of Dr. Lewis’s participation in assuring the quality of the NIH peer review process, and to express the NIH appreciation of your institution’s support of its activities,” said Noni Byrnes, PhD, director of the Center for Scientific Review.
