Lab tours will take place on Friday, March 3 at 4-5:30 PM. During that time, you will be able to visit the following labs:
Treweek Lab
The Treweek lab is the intersection of neuroscience and engineering. Our works focus on understanding the CNS and PNS pathways and physiological responses to the external stimuli on nerves and neurons to develop body worn or implantable medical devices to address some of the most pressing issues in neurological diseases.
Location: MCB 253A
Valero Lab
The Valero Lab will be presenting our bio-inspired robotics and AI projects. This will include a quadrupedal and bipedal robot, two robotic hands, as well as their creators.
Location: RTH 316A
Neural Modeling and Interface Lab
The mission of the USC Neural Modeling and Interface Laboratory, directed by Dr. Dong Song, is to build biomimetic devices that can be used to treat neurological disorders. During the tour, we will present our recently developed next-generation modeling and neural interface methodologies for investigating brain functions during naturalistic behaviors in order to (1) understand how brain regions such as the hippocampus perform cognitive functions, and (2) build cortical prostheses that can restore and enhance cognitive functions lost in diseases or injuries.
Location: HNB 403
Haptics Robotics and Virtual Interaction (HaRVI) Lab
The Haptics Robotics and Virtual Interaction (HaRVI) Laboratory explores how humans interact with our world, robots, and technology through touch. During this tour, you will learn about our research on assistive technology, social touch, and haptic rendering. Several haptic devices will be available for you to try in hands-on demos, including our wearable system for sending touch messages across a distance.
Location: RTH 416
ICAROS Lab
A phenomenon often observed in stroke survivors following a hemispheric stroke is an over-reliance on the less-affected limb for functional tasks at the expense of the paretic limb and in spite of recovered capacity. An ecologically valid evaluation of this phenomenon, called arm nonuse, can be challenging given that it requires the observation of arm choice for different tasks, which can easily be influenced by instructions (i.e., choose the paretic limb) or expectations and awareness that one is being tested. In an effort to better quantify this phenomenon, we developed the Bimanual Arm Reaching Test with a Robot (BARTR) to quantitatively assess arm nonuse in chronic stroke survivors. We show that the BARTR satisfies the criteria of an appropriate metric for neurorehabilitative contexts: it is valid, reliable, and simple to use. The BARTR is an instrument that utilizes a robot as a remote data collector of nuanced spatial data for clinical evaluations of arm nonuse that shows promise in determining the efficacy of interventions designed to reduce paretic arm nonuse
Location: RTH 417
Chung Laboratory
One primary focus of our research involves the design and application of bioinspired nanocarriers for theranostic applications. Through targeting elements, our platforms can be tailored to directly bind to sites of diseased tissue and to limit off-target side effects in healthy tissues. For imaging, our goal is to incorporate components within nanoparticles that are relevant for clinical modalities such as MR and PET imaging, with the hope of utilizing this technology for personalized medicine. For therapeutic applications, we engineer micelles with combination therapy and gene therapy, and design nanotherapeutics for specific routes of administration that considers patient compliance. Another focus in our lab is to harness and scale up the therapeutic and targeting ability of endogenous nanoparticles such as extracellular vesicles. In addition to understanding their fundamental nanomaterial properties, we engineer their surface and cargo to design nanomedicines tailored for specific diseases.
Location: MCB 377
Conference attendees will also see virtual presentations from the Motor Development Lab and Locomotor Control Lab.