News

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been a part of ROAR lab. It has been an incredible year for our lab with two PhD graduates - Dr. Xupeng Ai and Dr. Fitsum Petros. Also, Robert Carrera, currently a student in Columbia MD-PhD program, completed his PhD proposal defense.

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Jeonghan Yu to our group in the middle of this year. Dr. Chawin Ophaswongse and Dr. Isirame Omofuma, as current postdocs in the lab, have provided leadership to the "wheelchair robots for active postural support (WRAPS)" and "robotic upright stand trainer (RobUST)" projects, respectively. It was great to have Ilaria Fagioli, from Biorobotics Institute in Pisa, visit our lab as a PhD student, who helped us conduct new experiments with RobUST. Also, Dr. Himanshu Pota, a visiting professor from University of New South Wales in Canberra (Australia), helped to improve control performance of our cable systems as well as to study complex human movements. 

With continued commitment of PhD students Priya Kulkarni, Xincheng Zhao, Jiawei Chen, and Kevin Cho, we are looking forward to new discoveries and innovation in human movements and balance. They continue to lead projects on "traction neck braces", "mobile robotic training for cerebral palsy children",  "virtual reality mazes", and "neck control robots". We continued our work on  funded NIH projects  "Improving trunk control in children with cerebral palsy",  "Improving neck control in children with cerebral palsy", and NY State Department of Health project "Training of subjects with spinal cord injury to stand using robotic trainers".

We are pleased to welcome Darren Biskup and Hana Ro as new PhD students in our group who are currently defining and pursuing new directions of research. It is also a pleasure to have Federico Guerra visit us from University of Bologna who brings new perspectives in our thinking on cable-driven robot designs. I want to thank our MS  and BS student researchers who have helped us explore new directions of research and add richness to our ongoing work.

It was a great recognition of our research when I was invited to give the "2024 IEEE Robotics and Automation Plenary lecture in Yokohama" entitled "Rehabilitation Robotics: Improving Everyday Human Functions" in May this year. This lecture was well received by our international robotics community. 

Personally, I am thankful for the two honors received this year, "IIT Kanpur Distinguished Alumni Award" and "Edwin H. Armstrong Professor" by Columbia University. We hope that 2025 will bring new directions in our research both to excel and impact health in our community with scientific research.

Sunil Agrawal, PhD

ROAR Lab Director