Restoration of Reach and Grasp in Stroke Patients using Electrical Stimulation and Haptic Feedback

Salary - £27,319+ per annum

Applications are invited for a postdoctoral engineering research fellow with a background in applied control, biomechanical or rehabilitation engineering to join a multi-disciplinary research team investigating use of electrical stimulation to assist upper limb movement post stroke. The aim of this three year EPSRC funded project is to examine movement characteristics in unimpaired and stroke patients during everyday activities with their upper limb, before implementing and evaluating novel control schemes which assist stroke patients’ performance using electrical stimulation.

The project will address the problem that 80% of stroke patients experience long-term reduction in arm function and half of all patients are unable to perform tasks such as picking an object up off a table. The research builds on proof-of-concept work performed at Southampton which has shown that advanced control schemes that learn from a patient’s past performance can precisely assist movement. This project will develop this work in order to stimulate a number of muscles in the shoulder, wrist and hand, assisting functional tasks whilst the patient is also supported by a robot. The project will culminate with a clinical trial involving a number of patients using the system.

The necessary tasks will include:
  • Designing functional upper limb tasks using either real objects or a virtual reality environment
  • Investigating movement characteristics in experiments with unimpaired and stroke patients using a motion capture system and biomechanical models
  • Using sensor data to evaluate the accuracy of biomechanical models of the upper limb
  • Implementing and evaluating control schemes for the application of electrical stimulation to assist stroke patient’s movement of the arm, hand and wrist
  • Working with a clinician to ensure the system is suitable for use with stroke patients during a clinical trial
  • Preparing conference and journal papers


If you would like further details of the research or would like to discuss the post in further detail, please contact Professor Eric Rogers (etar@ecs.soton.ac.uk) or Dr Chris Freeman (cf@ecs.soton.ac.uk).

The project is funded by a grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and is available for up to 3 years.

Please visit http://www.jobs.soton.ac.uk and apply on-line, or call 023 8059 2750.

The closing date for applications is 25th February 2011 at 12.00 noon.
Please quote reference number 5235-11-G on all correspondence.