Ale is a new Lecturer in Biomedical Engineering and is establishing the area of Rehabilitation Engineering at the University of Dundee. She is interested in muscle movement, motor control, and rehabilitation with the aim of understanding the roles of health (for example for prevention of musculoskeletal disorders), disease (for example to understand progression during motor neuron disease), and injury (for example to address issues following amputation). She also has experience developing assistive medical technology from lab to market.
Her current research focuses on the development of assistive medical devices to assist people in improving their quality of life, whilst also significantly extending our knowledge of how the body moves using neurorehabilitation during health, disease, and following injury. She was recently awarded a grant of over £360K from the EPSRC to identify and analyse electrical activity patterns in patients’ muscles after suffering a stroke. This will be the first research of its kind and has the potential to change stroke care, optimise rehabilitation therapy, and even be investigated for future use in other conditions including Parkinson’s disease, dementia, and spinal cord injuries.
Ale is involved in a variety of outreach projects taking science and engineering out of the “lab.”
Alejandra Aranceta-Garza
