Congratulations to the 2015 NCSRR Visiting Scholars
The NCSRR will host its fourth group of Visiting Scholars this summer. We selected four exceptional candidates from a large and highly competitive pool of applicants based on their outstanding scientific potential, strong computational skills, and past contributions in modeling and simulation. The 2015 Scholars include Frank (Clay) Anderson, Dimitra Blana, Thomas Geijtenbeek, and Ricardo Matias. Read more about the scholars and their projects here.

Webinar: An Individually Tuneable Model of Spasticity and Contracture in Patients with Cerebral Palsy

Tuesday, May 21, 2015 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time
Marjolein van der Krogt from the VU University Medical Center and Lynn Bar-On from KU Leuven will describe their OpenSim plug-in to model spasticity, a method to model contracture, their validation against instrumented spasticity assessments, and how to tune model parameters to match individual patient data. Read more and register.

Tutorial at ICRA: Bridging Gaps Between Computational Biomechanics and Robotics

Tuesday, May 26, in Seattle, WA

OpenSim Fellow Emel Demircan is organizing a tutorial at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Seattle, which will feature talks from several OpenSim researchers from Stanford and beyond. Read more.

Job Opening in OpenSim Modeling at Keele University

The Rehabilitation Engineering Group at Keele University (with Ed Chadwick) is seeking a postdoctoral researcher to develop and validate a computer model of the hand, using OpenSim, describing the dynamics of hand function and sensory feedback mechanisms. The work forms part of the SenseBack project, an EPSRC-funded multicenter project to develop enabling technologies for the provision of sensory feedback in upper limb prosthesis users. Read more and apply.

Job Opening in Muscle Modeling and OpenSim
The Neuromuscular Mechanics Laboratory at Simon Fraser University (with James Wakeling) and the Concord Field Station at Harvard (with Andrew Biewener and Allison Arnold) are seeking a post-doctoral fellow to work for the final 3 years of a 4-year NIH funded project, starting July 1st, 2015. The overarching goal of this work will be to develop and validate new Hill-type muscle models to run within the OpenSim musculoskeletal simulation environment. Read more and apply.

New Shared Models and Resources
Several researchers in the OpenSim community have recently shared resources through their Simtk projects:

Zach Lerner and colleagues have provided a model of a sheep hind limb to accompany their recent publication.
Massimo Sartori and colleagues posted two primate-specific upper-extremity models to accompany their recent publication.
B.J. Fregly and the Grand Challenge Team have posted the instrumented knee replacement data for all walking trials included in their Sixth Grand Challenge dataset.

Have you recently shared models, data, or tools on your Simtk project? Let us know and we can feature your project in an upcoming newsletter. We also encourage you to let the wider biomechanics community know about your new projects and shared resources by posting to sites like Biomch-L.

Jennifer Hicks, Ph.D.

Director of Data Science | Mobilize Center

Associate Director | NCSRR
R&D Manager | OpenSim

Stanford University
650-498-4403 | jenhicks@stanford.edu