MIE and Kinesiology Postdoc Mark Price Wins Prestigious President’s Choice Award
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Mark Price, a postdoctoral researcher in the UMass Amherst Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) and Kinesiology Departments, received the President’s Choice Award at the 2025 American Society for Biomechanics Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh. The award recognized the best poster out of the 567 presented at the conference. Price does his research jointly in the Human Robot System Lab (HRSL) with the director of the HRSL, MIE Professor Meghan Huber, and in the UMass Integrative Locomotion Lab (UMILL) with the director of the UMILL, Kinesiology Professor Wouter Hoogkamer.
Price co-authored his winning poster – titled “Robotic pneumatic shoes elicit adaptations to weight-bearing symmetry during walking” – with Huber, Hoogkamer, and recent MIE graduate Sarah Szemethy. This research is a joint project between the HRSL and UMILL and funded by a National Institutes of Health R21 Trailblazer Award.
As Price explained this research as the first author of a related abstract for an upcoming publication, “Kinetic asymmetries in gait caused by neurological impairments are a major factor in mobility deficiency…To enable kinetic gait perturbation training on treadmills and overground, we developed novel adjustable compliance footwear technology. The system consists of a wearable pneumatic actuation module which controls the pressure of custom air pockets embedded in a soft lattice midsole and is capable of independently and wirelessly adjusting the midsole compliance under each foot.”
In that context, Price’s research with the HRSL and UMILL focuses on developing wearable robotic designs that work with the user to improve outcomes, using musculoskeletal simulations and experimental interventions to investigate new design paradigms.
According to Price, “My research interests are at the interface of assistive- and rehabilitative-device design, computational modeling of human biomechanics, and experimental analysis of human adaptation and motor learning.”
As Price explained, “I’m interested in finding ways to quantify how humans interact with and learn from assistive and rehabilitative devices, and [I’m] using that knowledge to develop prosthetic and wearable robot designs that work with their users to improve functional ability and quality of life. To accomplish these goals, I lean on my skillset in mechatronic design and fabrication, computational simulation of human biomechanics, and experimental investigation of human biomechanics and motor adaptation.”
Price received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from UMass Amherst while under the mentorship of MIE Professor Frank Sup in the Mechatronics and Robotics Research Lab.
Price said that, outside of the lab, he enjoys tabletop roleplaying, historical fencing, and “playing fiddle music on every instrument except the fiddle” in his contra-dancing band called Cojiro. (September 2025)