Office: (412) 822-3675
Office: (412) 822-3675
Biography

Dr. Ali Sonel is the Chief of Staff of VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System (VAPHS). He oversees VAPHS’ clinical management.

Dr. Sonel previously served as director of VAPHS’ cardiac catheterization laboratories and as associate chief of staff for its research and development program. He is a faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and teaches advanced cardiac life support at VAPHS. He also performs cardiac catheterizations and conducts research at VAPHS. 

Dr. Sonel received his medical degree from Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey. His graduate medical training included a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in cardiology at Indiana University in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and the American College of Cardiology.

 

Biography

Dr. Gellad's research focuses on physician prescribing practices and on policy issues affecting access and adherence to medications for patients, optimizing the quality, safety, and value of prescribing and prescription drug use. He is a nationally recognized authority on improving the measurement of medication adherence, has authored more than 100 articles in leading medical and policy journals, and he is a regular commentator on pharmaceutical policy issues in major news outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, and NPR, and the Wall Street Journal.

He was the recipient of a career development award from the Department of Veterans Affairs to study the quality and efficiency of prescribing in the VA and continues to lead research funded by the VA, NIH, CDC, and the state of Pennsylvania on multiple studies of pharmaceutical policy and prescription use. His work spans clinical areas, from diabetes, to Hepatitis C, to prescription drug and substance abuse. His policy area of expertise is prescription drug pricing and spending. He is a former member of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee on nonprescription drugs and currently an alternate member of the FDA Drug Safety Oversight Board.

Dr. Gellad is board certified in internal medicine and completed a residency and chief residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He sees primary care patients in the VA Pittsburgh Heathcare System and attends on the inpatient general medical service.

 

 

headshot
Office: (412) 822-3682
Biography

Jessica Steinberg’s role at HERL is to design, fabricate and test various assistive technology and medical devices. She received a bachelor's degree in bioengineering from the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering in 2023, and now she is pursuing a part-time master's degree in mechanical engineering. In her free time, Steinberg enjoys gardening and working on random hobby projects in her workshop.

headshot
Biography

Dr. Ning Lan obtained the Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University. He is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Director of Laboratory of NeuroRehabilitation Engineering, and the Executive Associate Director, Institute of Rehabilitation Engineering, School of Biomedical Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), PI of Institute of Medical Robotics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Adjunct Professor of Physical Therapy, University of Southern California. His main research interests include: (1) Neural control: computational and experimental studies of sensorimotor control functions and biomechanics of movement; (2) Rehabilitation engineering: designing functional electrical stimulation (FES) systems to retrain or suppress pathological limb movements for patients poststroke or with Parkinson’s disease; (3) Sensory feedback for hand prosthesis: developing transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation paradigm to provide tactile sensory information feedback for prosthetic hand; (4) Biorealistic control of hand prosthesis: computational modeling approach to restoring biorealistic properties of neuromuscular reflex for prosthetic hand. He served as Assistant Editor of IEEE Trans Rehab Engr and IEEE Trans Neural Engr and Rehab. (1997-2001); Associate Editor of Frontiers of Neurorobotics (2022-present), Guest Associate Editor of Frontiers in Computational Neurosciences (2014- present) and Frontiers in Neuroscience (Neuroprosthetics) (2021-present).

 

 

headshot
Biography

Nikhil Bajaj received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, in 2008, 2011, and 2017, respectively. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science in the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, and has held research assistant positions on several projects in the areas of nonlinear dynamics, control systems, sensing and machine learning, computational design, and heat transfer. Dr. Bajaj has had a research position with Alcatel-Lucent Bell Laboratories and has also served as a consulting mechatronics engineer with two startup technology companies in the areas of force sensing in gaming devices and the control of multi-actuator haptics. His research interests include nonlinear dynamical vibration and control systems and the analysis and design of mechatronic systems. These are applied in the context of resilient, learning sensor systems, neuromorphic computing, computer-based decision-making systems, and using dynamics in security. His current efforts are supported by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy-supported CyManII Research Institute, and corporate sponsors.

headshot
Biography

Ph. D., Seoul National University, Korea, February 1998
M. S., Seoul National University, Korea, February 1992
B. S., Seoul National University, Korea, February 1990 Major: Mechanical Engineering

headshot
Biography

Dr. Amr Mahmoud received his B.Sc. degree in Electronics and Electrical Communications Engineering and the M.Sc degree in Engineering Physics from Cairo University, Egypt, in 2011 and 2015, respectively. He earned his PhD in Computer Engineering from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor with the same department. His Research interests include, but not limited to: Machine Learning, especially Deep Learning, for Image Processing and Video Prediction, Neuromorphic Computing Systems and its applications. and Innovation in Engineering Education.

headshot
Biography

Zackory Erickson is an Assistant Professor in The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where he leads the Robotic Caregiving and Human Interaction (RCHI) Lab. His research focuses on developing new robot learning, mobile manipulation, and sensing methods for physical human-robot interaction and healthcare. Zackory received his PhD in Robotics and M.S. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech and B.S. in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. His work has won the Best Student Paper Award at ICORR 2019 and a Best Paper in Service Robotics finalist at ICRA 2019.

Syndicate content