Researcher of the Week: Yasmin Graham

Tue, 03 Apr 2018 21:11:33 -0400

Meet Yasmin! She is a junior mechanical engineering major, Meyerhoff and MARC U* STAR Scholar, LSAMP participant, a member of Phi Kappa Phi, and has consistently been named to the Dean’s and President’s lists at UMBC. She completed summer REUs at both M.I.T. and Vanderbilt University, and won the award for best research poster presentation at Vanderbilt’s Nanoscale Science and Engineering conference.

Yasmin also co-authored a publication in the scientific journal, Frontiers in Biological Detection: From Nanosensors to Systems IX. In her spare time, she is an exhibited photographer and member of the UMBC gospel choir and the robotics team. Her goal is to earn a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering with a focus in biomechanics. She is currently interested in the field of robotics and prosthetics. Yasmin just earned an honorable mention for the prestigious Goldwater scholarship.

Yasmin will present her research poster, "Rethinking Telerehabilitation: It’s Not The Metrics" at URCAD on April 25th from 10-11:30 a.m. in the UC Ballroom. Her mentor is Dr. Helena Mentis (Information Systems).

Abstract: Telerehabilitation is providing rehabilitation services outside of a formal rehabilitation center through information and communications technology (ICT).

Currently, emphasis is placed on the computational work – recognizing movement and quantifying it for use in home-based rehabilitation systems. For this study we wanted to further understand what information a rehabilitation specialist (occupational therapists and physical therapists) currently use, and how they would use that information in a telerehabilitation context when providing care to stroke survivors living in low-resource communities. We conducted a series of observations and interviews of stroke survivors and rehabilitation specialists and then categorized information and interaction behaviors into themes using an event logging software, Noldus Observer. We discovered rehabilitation specialists were not solely interested in the movements performed, but preferred more contextual and subjective information on their patients. Additionally, these specialists were eager to learn more regarding the everyday tasks their patients are completing to ensure the exercises that are prescribed translate to everyday tasks and functions. From our findings, we assert that telerehabilitation needs to centralize the experience of the patient and use movement data as a secondary supporting information source.