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Keya Ghonasgi

Keya Ghonasgi

Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering Member, Ken Kennedy Institute

Mechanical Engineering

CONTACT

kg81@rice.edu

WEBSITE(S)| Profile | Personal Site

SURF Mentoring

Potential projects/topics: Our research group develops wearable technologies for assistance and rehabilitation of motion. We are developing a wearable system of inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors using existing products for a real-world compatible device. This project will involve development of the communication and logging systems and making them easy for non-engineers to use. We will also deploy these systems in the lab and for home use in patient populations such as adults in the chronic phase after stroke, or in pediatric patients with cerebral palsy.

Potential skills gained: Our research group develops wearable technologies for assistance and rehabilitation of motion. We are developing a wearable system of inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors using existing products for a real-world compatible device. This project will involve development of the communication and logging systems and making them easy for non-engineers to use. We will also deploy these systems in the lab and for home use in patient populations such as adults in the chronic phase after stroke, or in pediatric patients with cerebral palsy.

Required qualifications:

  • Preferred course completions: Ideally students would have completed their sophomore year. A course on Dynamics is strongly preferred.
  • Preferred majors: Engineering majors, particularly mechanical engineers, who are interested in developing a wearable system and testing it with human participants will best suit this project.

Direct mentor: Faculty/P.I., Graduate Student

Research Areas

My research group will focus on human-robot partnerships that intelligently assist, rehabilitate and augment human performance. I am using reinforcement learning to better quantify human behavior and response to lower-limb exoskeleton interactions during walking. I defended my Ph.D. dissertation, "Practice Makes Perfect: Leveraging Exoskeleton Interactions To Elucidate The Motor Learning Process," at the University of Texas at Austin in July 2023 - where my research focused on upper-limb wearable devices. I earned my M.S. in Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University in 2018 where I explored the impact of pelvic forces on gait rehabilitation in able-bodied participants and those suffering from cerebral palsy. My other research stints include internships at IIT Bombay (2015-16), Intel (summer 2018), and Meta Reality Labs (summer 2022). I was honored as a 2022 Rising Star in ME and a 2023 CalTech Young Investigator Lecturer, and have received funding from various sources including UT Austin's graduate fellowship (2022-23), an NSF M3X grant, and through collaborations with Meta Reality Labs and Google Brain. The promising combination of human intuition & intention with ever-improving robot design & intelligence will inevitably lead to wearable robots becoming as ubiquitous as smartphones and smartwatches. I am passionate about realizing this vision through my research.