MIE Research Seminar
Content
🗓 Date: Monday, November 16, 2026
⏰ Time: 1:25 PM - 2:30 PM
📍 Location: College of Education, Furcolo Hall
"Pushing Exoskeletons Out of the Lab and Into the Wild: ‘Smart-Apparel’ to Support Resilient Mobility Across the Healthspan and Lifespan."
Abstract
Our aim in the Human Physiology of Wearable Robotics (PoWeR) Laboratory is to discover and exploit key principles of locomotion neuromechanics in order to build wearable devices that can augment intact or restore impaired human locomotion. Over the past 15 years we have taken a lower-limb joint and muscle-level approach to develop physiologically-inspired ankle and hip exoskeletons that aim to improve walking economy. Reducing effort and increasing speed for people post-stroke and in natural aging are important use-cases for exoskeletons - but other objectives such as improving balance or delivering body-borne, targeted resistance training may also be key for improving mobility. This talk will highlight some key foundational studies in the archive and touch on our recent collaborative projects that leverage wearable sensing & AI to speed the transition of bioinspired wearable technology out of the lab toward impact in ‘real-world’ environments in the form of ‘smart-apparel’ to support resilience across the lifespan.
Bio
Dr. Gregory S. Sawicki is a Woodruff Endowed Professor at Georgia Tech with appointments in the School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Biological Sciences. For the last 2 years, Sawicki has served as the Interim Executive Director of Georgia Tech's Institute on Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM).
Sawicki completed his Ph.D. in Human Neuromechanics at the University of Michigan, Ann-Arbor (‘07) and was an NIH-funded Post-Doctoral Fellow in Integrative Biology at Brown University (‘07-‘09). Sawicki was a faculty member in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at NC State and UNC Chapel Hill from 2009-2017. In 2023, Sawicki was awarded the American Society of Biomechanics Founders’ Award for scientific accomplishment in biomechanics and excellence in mentoring.
Sawicki directs the Human Physiology of Wearable Robotics (PoWeR) laboratory—where the goal is to combine tools from engineering, physiology and neuroscience to discover neuromechanical principles underpinning optimal locomotion performance and apply them to develop lower-limb robotic devices capable of improving both healthy and impaired human locomotion (e.g., for elite athletes, aging baby-boomers, post-stroke community ambulators).
Host: Prof. Meghan Huber and Prof. Holly Yanco
Sponsored by: IALS Center for Personalized Health Monitoring
We hope you can join us for this exciting seminar! Refreshments will be available pre-seminar, and opportunities for questions and discussion will be available post-seminar.