Rehabilitation Science PhD student, Sudeshna Chatterjee, received the first place at the 2017 Robert A. Levitt Awards for Student Research on Aging, sponsored by the Institute for Learning in Retirement at Oak Hammock (ILR). The ILR describes itself as a “community of retirement-age members who are engaged in lifelong learning, personal fulfillment and enjoyment through participation in a variety of courses, programs and activities.” Annually UF students are invited to submit an abstract of their current research; a subset of abstracts are selected for poster presentation at Oak Hammock, a UF-partnered retirement community. Faculty and ILR members judge the posters, and the “top five” are invited to present orally at the annual exposition.
Sudeshna gave an oral presentation of her work on “Quantifying the challenge of walking after stroke: insights from sympathetic nervous system activity during complex walking tasks.” This research, conducted under the mentorship of Dr. David Clark, used skin conductance and gait speed as measures of the level of challenge of different walking tasks with patients in post-stroke rehabilitation. The judges commented that the entire lineup of presentations was one of the strongest they had seen.
Congratulations Sudeshna!