A professor at Florida Polytechnic University has received a boost for his Parkinson's disease research.
Chris Kelley, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, was awarded a $200,000 National Science Foundation grant to apply control theory to improve the understanding of movement dysfunction in Parkinson’s patients, the university said in a release.
Control theory determines which electrical signals to send to a motor to move a robotic arm, for example. Kelley said for human movement, the brain decides which signals to send to muscles. Parkinson's patients have two main sets of symptoms, he said: tremor and movement inhibition or slowness of movement.
“We’re trying to capture whether both sets of symptoms are coming from the same overall source of dysfunction with a goal of improving the understanding of what’s going wrong and being able to apply that to improve diagnosis and treatment,” Kelley said in the release.
His research will use modeling and simulation, as well as robotic-based movement studies. He and two student research assistants will design a task to show the differences between the reach of people with and without Parkinson's.
“We’re mapping where in the feedback loop the dysfunction is and what role it plays, and then we’re producing low-order models and simulating those with tools like MATLAB to see if we can produce simulation results that match movement recordings in the literature,” Kelley said. “On the other side, we have a robotic device that can measure and manipulate human reaching.”
The two-year research effort's results could be applied to future Parkinson's treatment.
Terry Parker, Florida Poly's provost, said receiving the NSF grant celebrates Kelley's work and recognizes the Lakeland-based university's research strength.
“[Kelley] is an exceptionally talented professor whose research and instructional style inspire and engage students,” Parker said. “This NSF grant is very much deserved, and Florida Poly is proud of his achievements and his bright future that lies ahead.”
