Featured video: If the spacesuit fits
Movement really moves Richard Fineman, a fourth-year PhD student in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. Using wearable sensors and a range of complex modeling tools, Fineman is able to measure and understand a body in motion in unprecedented ways. He is using what he’s learning to advance human health and medicine, as well as astronaut garb. As a lifelong athlete, Fineman has always been interested in biomechanics and human motion. In his work, he is “able to evaluate whether a patient is at risk for falling” by using cameras and computers to gather position and movement data. Subjects in the lab are fitted with wearable sensors and asked to complete certain tasks. Their movements are tracked and captured and the resulting data is processed and analyzed to help define models that can “determine whether or not someone is at high versus low fall risk,” he explains. Fineman’s work measuring...