Cognitive Motor Balance Rehabilitation Laboratory Heading link
1919 W Taylor St
Tanvi Bhatt, UIC Department of Physical Therapy Heading link
Dr. Bhatt is the director of the Cognitive, Motor and Balance Rehabilitation Laboratory and co-director of the Clinical Gait and Motion Analysis laboratory. Her research interest and expertise are in the field of adaptive perturbation training for fall prevention. Her research involves investigating the neuromechanical basis of balance recovery from external perturbations such as slips and trips and subsequently designing intervention paradigms for reducing fall-risk in healthy and pathological populations. Her research interest and focus also lays in examining the effects of alternative cognitive and motor therapies (including virtual reality gaming and dance therapy) for improving impairment, function and participation in community-dwelling people with neurological disorders with an emphasis on stroke survivors.
Faculty & Staff Heading link
Dr. Shuaijie Wang is a research associate professor in the Motor Balance Rehabilitation Laboratory. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has rich experience in the area of biomedical engineering such as gait analysis, balance control, fall prevention, fall risk assessment, etc. His research interest involves analyzing the mechanism of falls, developing new training programs for reducing fall risk for older adults, and developing models to assess fall risks using machine learning.
| wangshj1985@gmail.com
Graduate Students Heading link
Jessica Pitts is a PhD candidate in the Cognitive, Motor, and Balance Rehabilitation Laboratory. She earned her B.S. in Kinesiology and Psychology from the College of William and Mary, and her M.S. in Kinesiology from Michigan Technological University. Her research focuses on reactive balance assessment and fall prevention training in older adults, especially Alzheimer’s Disease/Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) populations. For this work, she is currently supported by a predoctoral F31 fellowship award from the National Institute on Aging (1F31AG086016-01).
| jpitts5@uic.edu
Rudri Purohit is a PhD candidate in Rehabilitation Sciences and a research assistant at the Cognitive, Motor, and Balance Rehabilitation Laboratory. She earned her M.S in Rehabilitation Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago and B.S. in Physical Therapy from the Sancheti College of Physiotherapy in India and has clinical experience in neurorehabilitation as a physical therapist in the United States. Her initial doctoral research included examining the interaction of aging and cortical stroke on reactive balance control and motor adaptation to perturbation training and testing the effects of neuromodulatory agents like functional electrical stimulation on reactive balance and falls among people with high stroke-related motor impairment. Her current research work focuses on testing the feasibility of smartphone-based exercise training with functional electrical stimulation to improve physical and cognitive function, and quality of life among underserved aging adults with high stroke-related motor imapirment. For this project, she has received doctoral pilot funding from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) funded Midwest Roybal Center for Health Promotion and Translation. Rudri is also pursuing a second doctoral concentration in Neuroscience and is interested in examining the intricate neural mechanisms underlying reactive balance control and falls among neurological populations, especially stroke.
| rpuroh2@uic.edu
Deshmukh completed her undergraduate studies in Physical Therapy from Pravara Institute of Medical Sciences, India, and earned a Master’s degree in Rehabilitation Sciences from UIC in the summer of 2021. After completing her master’s, she practiced as a licensed clinician in New York for two years. She started her PhD program in Rehabilitation Sciences in Fall 2023. Her research focuses on areas such as balance, cognition, and motor training across various demographics.
| sdeshm9@uic.edu
Upasana is a Physical Therapist from India who has completed both her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Physical Therapy. With experience in training and treating the Neurological population with NDT (C/NeuroDevelopmentalTreatment) and Aquatic therapy. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD with her research focused on reactive balance, fatigue assessments, and telehealth training in aging and other populations.
| usahu2@uic.edu
Alumni Heading link
Savitha Subramaniam
Manjeshwar Sahana Srinivas Kamath
Shamali Dusane
Lakshmi Kannan
Gonzalo Varas
Ernest K Ofori
Rachana Gangwani
Falguni Kulkarni
Edwina Gautam Wilson
Sparsh Jain
Maharshi Patel