Lab news
Konczak’s HSC lab receives $50,000 NSF I-corps award
Friday, June 28, 2019
Arash Mahnan 
Jessica Holst-Wolf, PhD 
Jürgen Konczak, PhD
The Human Sensorimotor Control Laboratory received a $50,000 award from the National Science Foundation to participate in the national NSF Innovation Corps program. The purpose of this grant is to move forward the translation of a technology developed in the lab to treat a voice disorder called spasmodic dysphonia (SD).
SD causes a permanent hoarse and strangled voice that makes it exhausting to communicate. Doctoral student Arash Mahnan, lead engineer on the project, and Jessica Holst-Wolf, PhD, will form a team with business mentor Bryan Claseman to conduct customer discovery interviews across the nation. Interviews will take place over an 8-week period, and will include patients, otolaryngologists, speech therapists and other stakeholders in the medical device industry. The goal of these activities is to explore the opportunities and challenges for the possible commercialization of the technology. Jürgen Konczak, PhD, professor in the School of Kinesiology, serves as the principal investigator on the project.
Kinesiology PhD student presents on virtual reality effects on gait
Jun 18, 2019 : Jinseok Oh, doctoral student in the School of Kinesiology and member of the Human Sensorimotor Control Laboratory, recently presented a research proposal at the Advanced Technology Institute’s Nonlinear Methods for Psychological Science Conference about the influences of the virtual reality environment on gait. The conference, hosted by the American Psychological Association, was held at the […]
Mahnan wins runner up at the Walleye Tank Competition
May 17, 2019 : Arash Mahnan, PhD student in the School of Kinesiology, received a runner up award in the 2019 Walleye Tank Competition, Junior Anglers category, for his pitch about the medical device he is developing in the Human Sensorimotor Control Lab. The device is a non-invasive neuromodulation medical device for treatment of the voice disorder spasmodic dysphonia […]
Curry awarded $1000 NRT Mini-grant
May 15, 2019 : Chris Curry, Kinesiology doctoral candidate and member of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory, has been awarded a $1000 NSF Research Trainee Mini-grant for lab equipment. The lab equipment will be used for two research projects that focus on Virtual Reality (VR). One project is related to Curry’s dissertation research, which involves investigating ways to potentially mitigate […]
Mahnan presents at 30th NSDA Symposium in Boston
May 8, 2019 : Arash Mahnan, PhD student in the School of Kinesiology, was invited to present at the 30th National Spasmodic Dysphonia Association (NSDA) symposium held in Boston April 26th-27. The symposium was designed for patients with SD to meet and get the most recent updates on the current research related to SD. At the event, he discussed […]
Kinesiology’s Arash Mahnan awarded startup grant from MIN-CORPS for SD Collar device
May 8, 2019 : Arash Mahnan, Kinesiology PhD student, has been awarded a $3000 STARTUP Mini-Grant from MIN-CORPS for customer discovery and product development expenses for the Spasmodic Dysphonia (SD) Collar device he has been developing with colleagues in the Human Sensorimotor Control Laboratory. Spasmodic dysphonia (SD) is a voice disorder that leads to strained or choked speech, and is […]