Marjorie Skubic

Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. and Computer Science Dept. (joint apt.)
Director, Center for Eldercare and Rehabilitation Technology
College of Engineering
University of Missouri-Columbia
Columbia, MO 65211-2060
Office: 329 Engineering Building West
Phone: (573) 882-7766
Fax: (573) 882-8318
Email: skubicm [at] missouri.edu

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Sensor Data Links     I70 Corridor Network on Aging     Short Bio     Long CV


Eldercare and Sports Medicine papers

For Spring, 2016, I am teaching ECE 3220, Software Design for C and C++. Office Hours: Monday 2-3pm and Wednesday 10:30-11:30am
For Fall, 2016, I will be teaching Architectural Robotics again. Course outline



RESEARCH:

My research interests include sensory perception, pattern recognition, and human-machine interaction. My current research projects are focused on understanding and using sensor signals. In particular, we are investigating computational intelligence techniques for studying real-time sensory perception and interactive human-machine interfaces, and applying them to robotics (especially human-robot interaction), spatial referencing interfaces, gait analysis, and now eldercare and rehabilitation. We are especially interested in proactive healthcare models, which include early detection of health changes and screening tools to detect high risk of injury. For more information, see also our Center for Eldercare and Rehabilitation Technology which includes links to our papers.

October, 2014: We have been working on two systems that screen for potential injury risk. One project is collaborative with sports doc, Dr. Aaron Gray, to screen athletes: Portable Inexpensive Motion Analysis System to Identify Female Athletes at High Risk of Knee ACL Tear . We are also working on game-based intervention exercises. The second project is collaborative with music professor, Dr. Paola Savvidou, to develop a screening tool for piano students: Measuring the Alignment of Piano Students for Injury Prevention

October, 2013: We started a new NSF-funded US Ignite project to develop an interactive interface to support remote physical therapy: GENI-Enabled In-Home Personalized Health Monitoring and Coaching . This is being tested with participants in private homes in Kansas City, using Google Fiber.

May, 2013: We will be running a larger study of our sensor-based health alert system, in a new project funded by NIH: Intelligent Sensor System for Early Illness Alerts in Senior Housing . Sensors include our new hydraulic bed sensor for capturing pulse, respiration, and restlessness as well as the Kinect depth camera for capturing in-home gait parameters. We will install 70 systems in Americare senior housing in mid-Missouri.

July, 2012: We began a new collaboration in eldercare technology with Western Home Communities in Cedar Falls, IA, Inventive Health Solutions in Kansas City, and Lincoln University in Jefferson City, MO in a new project: An In-Home Health Alert System with Remote Care Coordination funded by the NSF as part of the US Ignite initiative.

Sept., 2010: We started a new project: Human-Driven Spatial Language for Human-Robot Interaction funded by the HCC program at the NSF and collaborating with Laura Carlson at Notre Dame.

Sept., 2009: We started 3 new eldercare projects:
Active Heterogeneous Sensing for Fall Detection and Fall Risk Assessment funded by the CPS program at the NSF. (investigates vision and acoustic sensing)
Technology to Automatically Detect Early Signs of Illness in Senior Housing funded by NIH.
Technology to Automatically Detect Falls and Assess Fall Risk in Senior Housing funded by AHRQ. (investigates radar sensing)

Sept., 2008: A new project started under the NGA-funded Text to Sketch program: Natural-Language Processing Applied to Geospatial Information led by Dr. Jim Keller.

Jan, 2008: We started a new eldercare project, Elder-Centered Recognition Technology for the Assessment of Physical Function , funded by the NSF HCC program, which is now investigating the monitoring of gait and physical movement in a multi-person environment. This is an extension of our other ongoing work using passive sensor networks to monitor the physical and cognitive health of elders for early problem identification.

Jan, 2007: Our Mizzou ADVANCE grant (funded by the NSF) has started, with the goal of helping women faculty in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Programs include mentoring, climate theatre, and a STRIDE committee, as well as a research program to evaluate the effectiveness of each component.

GK-12 Fellowships for Fall, 2006 ($30K per year): I will be looking for two students to fill GK-12 fellowships for the 2006-2007 academic year. (ECE or Computer Science) Fellows work with local students in grades 6-9 to develop engineering design projects such as lego robots. Details on the application process can be found here . See also the Project Web Site for more information.

Fall, 2005: We are continuing work on our sketch-based interfaces for control of one or more mobile robots. In summer, 2005, we collaborated with the Naval Research Lab on a demo and usability study at the AAAI conference. Here is the abstract on using sketches to control a team of robots.

Jan., 2005: We started a new project, Technology Interventions for Elders with Mobility and Cognitive Impairments incorporating smart home technology into eldercare systems. This NSF ITR project is a multidisciplinary collaboration with nursing and health management and informatics. All of our RA positions have been filled but keep watching for announcements. In general, I am especially looking for students with experience and interest in pattern recognition, computational intelligence, and computer vision. If you want to become part of the team, you should take courses in these areas.

Jan, 2004: We started a project on Biologically Inspired Working Memory for Robots , funded through the NSF ITR program.

Older projects include: The Guinness Robot Project   which incorporates Using Spatial Language for Human-Robot Communication ,   Analyzing Sketched Route Maps ,   and   Face Recognition with MSNN .   Also, Equine Gait Analysis .   Check out the projects page and additional projects: Learning Force Sensory Patterns and Skills from Demonstration ,   and Event-Driven Computing Projects for Software Engineering Education.

SERVICE:

I am co-leading the I-70 Corridor Network on Aging with Dr. Dennis Domer. We held our second annual conference in Columbia, MO in November, 2014.

In 2013-2014, I was a co-lead for a SmartAmerica Challenge team on Closed Loop Healthcare : - from home to hospital and back home again.

I was the chair of the AAAI Fall and Spring Symposia series. I also organized a symposium for the AAAI Fall 2012 Symposia Series on AI for Gerontechnology, and one for the AAAI Fall 2008 Symposia Series on AI in Eldercare: New Solutions to Old Problems.

CogRIC: I was one of the organizers for an international workshop on cognitive robotics, held in Windsor, England, U.K. on August 16-18, 2006. (funded by the NSF and the EPSRC)

I was the Registration Co-Chair for the HRI 2007 Conference held March 8-11 in Washington, D.C. HRI 2007 Work assignments for the student volunteers.
I was also the Registration Chair for HRI 2006 : The 1st Annual Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, held March 2-4 in Salt Lake City. The HRI conferences are designed to be present high quality papers in a single track format. RegOnline     HRI 2006 Work assignments for the student volunteers

In 2006, we held three Saturday Science sessions introducing programming concepts to junior high students by teaching them to program small lego robots.

I was the Program Co-Chair for RO-MAN 2005: The 14th IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication.

I was also a guest editor for a special issue on Human-Robot Interaction for the IEEE Transactions on SMC Part A. In all, 47 papers were submitted to the issue. With the help of many, excellent reviewers, 10 papers were selected for publication in July, 2005.

NEWS:

Tribune (eldercare)     EE Times (robots)     Students in the News


Publications and selected Talks   (old lists)

Computational Intelligence Research Lab     MU Chapter of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society

Educational Outreach Programs

Sketch Understanding links

Paintings

COURSES:

ECE 1000 Intro to Electrical and Computer Engineering 2013
ECE 4870/7870 and CS 4770/7770: Intro to Computational Intelligence Fall, 2012
ECE 4340/7340 and CS 4730/7730: Building Intelligent Robots Spring, 2011
ECE 8820: Pattern Recognition Fall, 2008
ECE 4220: Real Time Embedded Computing   Winter, 2007


February, 2016