The first Lab Crawl for the 2017/18 Winter term took place on Friday, November 3rd at the Blusson Spinal Cord Centre and hosted 18 KIN students across all year levels. The Blusson Spinal Cord Centre is a unique facility dedicated to advancing world-leading integrated research and care for people with spinal cord injury. It is also home to three of the School of Kinesiology’s leading-edge research laboratories directed by Dr. Tania Lam and Dr. Chris West.
Over the course of the 90 minute tour, we visited the Physical Activity Research Centre (PARC), Human Locomotion Research Laboratory, and the Translational Integrative Physiology Laboratory. Through presentations by Sharon Jang, Alison Williams and Preet Gandhi in PARC, students learned more about the adaptive equipment that is used by the local spinal cord injury community while participating in research on exercise and physical activity.
Alex Williams from Chris West’ lab gave two students an opportunity to participate in an ultrasound demonstration of the heart, and introduced the group to explore the heart through its different chambers and angles. Her research focuses on cardiac function and its effect on spinal cord injuries.
Gevorg Eginyan, one of Dr. Lam’s research assistants, led a demonstration where students were involved in identifying different landmarks on the body and then applied sensors to build a digital skeleton.
Alison Williams, Human Locomotion Research Laboratory’s Lab Coordinator wrapped up the Lab Crawl by showing us some of the high end robotics she is using in her masters thesis; the Lokomat and Ekso Bionic exoskeletons – tools to assist getting patients back on their feet by supporting the re-learning and correction of step patterns.
Lab Crawls are held once per term and are a great way to introduce and expose undergraduate students to the diverse range of research and opportunities available within the School of Kinesiology. There are multiple ways to get KINvolved in research, as a participant or volunteer.
If you want to find out more information about ICORD, visit: http://icord.org/
If you’d like to get involved in KIN research as a participant, visit https://kin.educ.ubc.ca/research/research-subject-recruitment/ and fill out a subject recruitment form.