[Opensim-announcement] Request for Letters of Support from the OpenSim Community

[opensim-announcement at simtk.org]

Dear OpenSim Community:

We are submitting a proposal to continue support for the OpenSim project and are seeking letters of support from you, the OpenSim community, to strengthen our proposal. We have prepared a template to assist with writing these letters, and have attached it to this email. We hope to receive all letters of support by November 5.

Our proposal is to create a NIH National Center for Mobility Data Integration and Insight (Mobilize) whose driving biomedical aim is to improve and motivate mobility for individuals who have neurological and musculoskeletal disorders or injuries. The proposal is in response to the NIH's Big Data to Knowledge RFA. The Mobilize Center will create open source tools for automatically integrating motion data, of all types and levels of fidelity, into a centralized database. The center will then utilize this database by developing and applying tools that combine physics- and physiology-based modeling with data mining to test hypotheses, diagnose gait pathology, and predict the outcome of interventions. We are targeting a broad range of disorders and injuries, including cerebral palsy, osteoarthritis, running injuries, obesity, fall risk, stroke, and many others.

It would be a great help to our proposal to have testimonial letters from you, stating how you currently use OpenSim and indicating your willingness to contribute your experimental data, models and simulations to the knowledgebase we plan to establish. The letters could also explain the impact you think the Mobilize Center would have on our field. A diversity of letters from around the world will help our effort. Attached is a template you may find useful for writing the letter.

We would be grateful if you could send a signed letter (preferably as a PDF file on your own letterhead) to opensim at stanford.edu by November 5. If you would like to provide a letter, but cannot meet this deadline, please let us know.  Also, please let me know if you have any questions or ideas about the proposal.  I'm happy to fill you in.

Thanks so much for your ongoing participation and support.

Sincerely,
Scott Delp and the OpenSim Team
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