Hello.
Hi. My name is Evan.
I am a Ph.D. researcher trained in human motion biomechanics, striving to understand how we move and why we move; to help people move better, no matter what better means to them.
Translation: I am completed my PhD in human motion biomechanics at the University of Virginia Motion Analysis and Motor Performance Lab (technically the degree reads Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering). I want to know how we move and why we move; so that we can help people move better, regardless of what "better" means to that person, e.g., faster, stronger, higher, more consistent, more stable, more efficient, or safer.
Currently
I am currently work for Exponent, Inc as an Associate in the Biomechanics Practice with a focus on proactive projects. More specifically, we are:
Designing and executing human experiments to quantify and interpret explicit health and performance characteristics within lab, virtual, and real-world-based environments.
Advancing musculoskeletal models to quantify and evaluate human dynamics and performance.
Using innovative data analysis approaches to understand or inform health, wellness, and performance outcomes for a broad range of biomechanical and physiological data streams.
Grad School Experience
My dissertation research focused on mobility assistance devices and the people that use them every day. I aimed to answer the question: how do we make devices that truly help people and don’t aid them in some aspects, but ultimately end up detrimental to their development or recovery?
My primary research project is developing a predictive simulation framework to assess how possible assistance methods may change a person's walking. While human walking has been studied extensively, how assistive devices, such as posterior walkers, affect gait is much less well defined. Many individuals with walking disorders, due to neuromuscular disabilities, such as cerebral palsy (CP), use assistive devices, such as walkers or crutches, to aid their mobility. The goal of this work is to first understand the effect of using a walker on both the stability and efficiency of the gait of individuals with walking disorders, then devise and implement a control scheme that can add assistive forces to the user to improve the efficiency of their walking, while maintaining the stability benefits of the device. To complete this goal, I have developed a novel computational model of a human using a posterior walker. I am designing and testing a feedback control algorithm to determine the optimal assistance method, for human stability maintenance and energy reduction, through the use of torque applied at the rear wheels of the walker. I will use all of this to implement and validate the optimal control algorithm on a human using a posterior walker with motorized rear wheels and onboard microprocessors that allow for real-time control of assistance. Ultimately, this work will result in a posterior walker with motorized rear wheels driven by a control scheme optimized to increase efficiency of ambulation without losing stability benefits of the device. The significance of this effort is to provide a posterior walker that reduces the workload of walking, keeping this population walking longer, providing critical exercise and continued muscle development. This will result in greater independence and improved quality of life for the user, as well as lessen the impact of their condition on their caregivers; providing key physiological, mental, and social benefits to them both.
Beyond this project, I was the first PhD student in my lab. As the first PhD student, I was also responsible for several other exciting projects. I developed multi-segment models of the foot/ankle complex to quantify changes in the degrees of freedom at the ankle joint and investigate the effects of arthroplasty (ankle replacement) and arthrodesis (ankle fusion) on the mobility, stability, and efficiency of multiple ambulatory activities. Also, I have developed and implemented several methods to quantify the static and dynamic stability of patients seen in our lab. Specifically, I have developed an angular momentum analysis of body segments that can be used to investigate which segments of the body are contributing more angular momentum during movement and thus moving the patient farther from completely stable. I applied this method to patients recovering from spinal decompression and stabilization surgery to treat cervical spondylotic myelopathy (degenerative compression of the spinal cord in the neck). I have found that these patients recover their static stability before their dynamic stability. This is critical to understanding when we should perform surgery on this population, how we can best rehabilitate them afterwards, and how long the patients can expect to be recovering. Additionally, I collected kinematic and kinetic data of patients recovering from femoral nailing procedures to determine which method of femoral nailing, performed by orthopedic surgeons’, results in the best functional outcomes, through six-months recovery. While each of these projects focuses on a different pathology, the goal in each case is to use movement quantification and analysis to understand the effects of these conditions to provide the best possible care to future patients, relieving the effects of each pathology as much as possible.
How I got here.
Snowboarding has taught me innumerable things. One of which is that how we move matters. This fascination with how we move led me to study biomedical engineering as an undergraduate. I became preoccupied with the idea of how we could make snowboarding safer without sacrificing the competitiveness and exhilaration that made me grow to love it. Through experience with my college snowboard team, I was constantly intrigued by how humans can use diverse movement strategies to achieve a common goal. Additionally, I learned how we can define movement strategies that work and teach them to people to help them get closer to their goals. I gained even greater perspective while working as an adaptive ski school instructor, teaching people with physical and mental disabilities to ski and snowboard. Here it quickly becomes clear that everyone is unique, and we need to come up with many strategies to enable people to overcome any barriers to their movement.
During my third year of undergraduate studies, I was intrigued by the research described by a guest lecturer. I saw how my interest in movement and safety could be translated into scientific research that helps not just snowboarders, but all kinds of people. I started out like every undergrad: only useful for pushing buttons. But as I pushed more buttons, I began to learn what they did and why I was pushing them in the first place. During my time as an undergraduate researcher, I conducted a study to determine the effect of wearing knee support for baseball catchers, from conception through publication. As I worked on this project, I became fascinated with how we can learn not just about how humans move, but how what they interact with affects that movement.
Everything in our environment affects how we move, from objects we need to avoid to objects we connect with to get from point A to point B. There is so much that we still do not know about how we interact with devices. This what which I want to investigate moving forward. Whether this is in an academic or industry lab, the goal is the same: understand the effects of people using devices, in order to make every interaction as useful to the user as possible. The thing that makes us more stable, may also slow us down. The thing that propels us to run faster may change the muscle recruitment strategy for running and be detrimental to our ability to perform everyday tasks. Life is a balance and every change we make has trade-offs. We cannot truly determine the best course of action until we can evaluate both sides.