Based upon action by the James Madison University Board of Visitors on April 19th I have been granted tenure effective August 25th, 2024. I am excited to continue my work as an Associate Professor of Engineering and Curator of Coins at JMU for a long time.
This could not be accomplished without the tremendous support of many people including: the other members of the "Engineering Triplets" Shraddha Joshi and Daniel Castaneda who started with me in 2018, my CS "brothers-in-law" of Michael Stewart and Kevin Molloy, my doctoral advisor Tom Martin, the multitude of undergraduate researchers who have passed through the Wearable Computing Group, and the constant love and support of my wife, Katie Forsyth.
Passive Haptic Learning at SIEDS 2024
Megan Caulfield presented the results of her honors thesis, "Braille Learning using Haptic Feedback" at the 2024 IEEE Systems and Information Engineering Sympossium on May 3rd at the University of Virginia. Her research examined the effectiveness of haptic feedback when learning to read and write braille which is motivated by the challenges of sighted parents and teachers learning braille to suppor their visually impaired children and students.
Student Research at SIEDS 2023
The work of several JMU honors students and capstone projects was presented last week at the 2023 IEEE Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium (SIEDS) hosted by the University of Virginia. Sanda Thura (JMU Computer Science '23) presented his honors thesis on applications of machine learning for cardiac disease detection on embedded systems. His paper can be viewed here. Sanda was advised by myself, Dr. Kevin Molloy (JMU CS), and Dr.
Megan Caulfield (JMU Engineering '24) and Justin Blevins (JMU Engineering '23) presented their research on wearable computing systems and haptic feedback. Their work explores how to provide haptic "instructions" to guide a person's motion. This work is an initial step on our larger progress to create general systems to provide feedback during physical therapy. Their poster is available here.
Justin will be graduating this semester and beginning work with Northrup Grumman in Charlottesville.
4-VA Grant with Sol Lim (Virginia Tech) Sol Lim, Michael Stewart (JMU), I have received a 4VA grant to explore wearable haptic systems for persons with visual impairement entitled: "Supporting College Students with Impaired Vision in a Shared Housing Through Haptic-Guided Peripersonal Navigation" The work will be led by Dr. Lim and her students with supporting hardware and software development from JMU.
ASEE Paper On Convergent Problems and Entrepreneurial Learning Stu Thompson (Bucknell), Alan Cheville (Bucknell) and I have published a paper at ASEE examining how the Entrepreneurially-Minded Learning (EML) framework can be applied to convergent problems.
There are many new items to report for the Wearable Computer Research group this fall semester!
New Undergraduate Researchers With the graduation of Sophia Cronin (Microsoft) and Jonathan Li (Dev Technology Group) we are in need of new undergraduate researchers. We are excited to have join the research group:
Megan Caulfield (JMU Engineering '24): will continue development of wearable and electronic textile solutions to provide feedback during movement correction. Dawson Dolanksy (JMU Computer Science '23): will focus on extending our real-time management and streaming for inertial measurement units to provide high-quality data during activity recognition and feedback.
Based upon action by the JMU Board of Visitors on April 16th I have been promoted to Associate Professor of Engineering effective August 25th, 2021.
I greatly appreciate the guidance and support from my JMU Engineering colleagues over the last three years. Furthermore, a great debt is owed to the undergraduate researchers in the Wearable Computing Lab for this milestone. I thank you all.
At least the door change is effective immediately.
Despite the pandemic, Spring 2021 has been a productive time for the undergraduate researchers in the Wearable Computing Lab.
Stephen Mitchell presents his work at IEEE SouthEast Conference
Stephen Mitchell has presented his latest work at IEEE SouthEast Conference. This short paper and presentation is an extension of his previous work that was presented at MARCUS 2019. Additional analysis is on-going and has been accepted as publication for a full paper at SIEDS 2021.
Sophomore JMU Engineering student and undergraduate researcher in the Wearable Computing Group, Stephen Mitchell, presented his initial research on measuring athlete performance at the 2019 Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference on Undergraduate Scholarship (MARCUS) at Randolph College. His work examines using low-cost inertial measurement units (IMU) to calculate an athletic performance measure called the "Drop Jump Ratio". These IMUs are low-cost, light weight, and more mobile than traditional force plates used to calculate the drop jump ratio.
Sanarea Ali at CAPWIC 2019
JMU Engineering student, Sanarea Ali, gave a flash talk on her proposed wearable computing system for physical rehabilitation at the ACM Capital Region Celebration of Women in Computing (CAPWIC). Her research examines how wearable computing can support clinicians in understanding patient injuries and improving their recovery. The abstract of her talk is included here.