On June 12-17, 2016, experts on the biology and engineering of human and animal movement will assemble at the Deer Creek Conference Center and Lodge in Mt. Sterling, OH, for a conference entitled, "Biomechanics and Neural Control of Movement". The goal of the meeting is to promote intensive open-ended debate about the current state of knowledge and areas of future research on human and animal movement. Specific sessions will cover muscle, bone, locomotion, reaching and grasping, modeling, and rehabilitation. The unique venue, isolated from distractions, and the inclusion of experts from many different scientific fields should make this conference different from many annually occurring conferences that are focused on narrower aspects of human and/or animal movement. The proposal seeks funding to publish the consensus findings of the expert panels of the meeting to serve as a roadmap for scientists, engineers, and program managers for federal funding agencies. The outcome should lead to greater scientific advances in the treatment of individuals with movement disabilities, creation of new technology for assisting human movement, and the design of robots emulating biological movement.
This conference proposal requests support for journal publication charges. 45 invited experts in muscle biology, movement energetics, skeletal biomechanics, neuromotor adaptation, locomotion, sensorimotor control, rehabilitation robotics, and neuromusculoskeletal modeling will come together in a conference center isolated from a major city. The remote location, relatively small size (140 attendees), and ample discussion time in the program should provide for considerable opportunity to have productive debate on current understanding of the physiology and engineering of movement. Roboticists, computer scientists, physiologists, kinesiologists, clinicians, and biomedical engineers will bring their disparate perspectives to the meeting. There are 9 invited panels with five speakers each. Each panel will prepare a summary review journal paper for publication in a special issue of an open access journal (e.g. Journal of Neural Engineering) to disseminate the discussion and findings of the panel. The funding from this award will go towards the page charges for the special issue.
