Category: Health and Kinesiology

Geiger to assess effects of some chemicals on children’s sleep

Feb. 14, 2023 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Endocrine disrupting chemicals are found in many common household items, and our blood

PFAS are found in many common household items and found in our blood.

Multiple studies have shown that children who regularly get an adequate amount of sleep have improved attention, behavior, learning, memory, and overall mental and physical health. Not getting enough sleep can lead to high blood pressure, obesity and depression. An Illinois researcher wants to help mitigate those sleep issues. 

Kinesiology and Community Health assistant professor Sarah Geiger is planning to assess how the exposure to certain chemicals while in the womb affects child sleep later in life and can lead to poorer health outcomes. Geiger’s study is funded by an R03 grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) component dedicated to environmental health research. In the grant application, Geiger writes that “the potential for prenatal exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) to adversely impact children’s health is a growing public health issue.” As Geiger explains, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are EDCs found in many common household items and found in our blood.

“They’re so pervasive in terms of products,” said Geiger, who investigates environmental pollutants and chronic disease risk factors, including sleep problems, among children. “Studies have shown them to be found in foods (and) they’re notorious for these non-stick surfaces, but that’s really just one of so many types of things they’re in. Plastic water bottles, plastic fast food containers. They’re even in biomedical devices and things like IV bags and makeup, all sorts of cosmetics, nail polish.”

Geiger said her study is looking at the pregnant mom’s concentrations of those chemicals in her blood, and then looking at outcomes in children.

“We’re measuring her levels as a proxy of what they’re being exposed to,” Geiger said. “The idea is that developmental exposure in the womb to those chemicals that their mother has been exposed to is somehow altering their development and manifesting later as sleep problems. What we’re really interested in is looking at the association between the two. Are moms with higher levels of these chemicals in their blood more likely to have children who have poorer sleep quality? And if so, then we can think about maybe what is the mechanism that is causing that to happen?”

Geiger added that the study is not only looking at how chemical exposure in the womb affects child sleep later on, but also how stress and depression and other factors during pregnancy can affect child’s sleep later on. The study is important, Geiger said, because sleep, or the lack of it, is a predictor for health. Lack of sleep for a child can lead them to be unfocused and unproductive. And a lack of sleep in childhood is predictive of sleep issues in adulthood, she said, adding that sleep problems in adulthood cost the U.S. billions of in health care.

Another reason this research is important is how long certain PFAS can stay in a person’s body.

“They are sometimes called forever chemicals; they have an extremely long half-life compared to other types of endocrine-disrupting chemicals,” Geiger said. “The half-life might be like five years. Let’s say you have a certain level of this one chemical in your blood, after five years, half of it would have been metabolized or excreted from your body. To give you a comparison, like BPA (bisphenol A), another common endocrine-disrupting chemical, the half life is more like five hours.”

As important as the research is, Geiger is realistic that studies like hers and others are not likely to force companies to limit their use of PFAS.

“These are extremely powerful market forces … I would like to think that all of the research combined on sleep and other things may apply some pressure, but—and I do think that the end goal is to try to remove or limit these types of chemicals if they are harmful—but that’s much easier said than done. It’s a pretty difficult task. 

Editor’s note:

To reach Sarah Geiger, email smurphy7@illinois.edu.
 

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Stretching their Reach: Robotic support for older individuals

Jan. 09, 2023 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

The goal is to create a scalable, affordable, flexible Stretch Cognitive and Physical Assistant that can improve the quality of life for older adults with a range of cognitive and physical impairments

University of Illinois researcher Dr. Wendy Rogers is stretching her work with Stretch the Robot.

The Kinesiology and Community Health professor has received a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institute on Aging (National Institutes of Health), for approximately $2.5 million.

The research will be conducted between December 2022 and November 2024 and builds on a Phase I grant that Rogers and Dr. Aaron Edsinger, CEO of Hello Robot, received last year. Other Illinois collaborators on the new grant include Speech and Hearing Science Associate Professor Raksha Mudar and Harshal Mahajan, Assistant Director of Research for the McKechnie Family LIFE Home. Also part of the new team are ClarkLindsey, an independent, senior living community in Urbana, Ill.; Dr. Vy Nguyen, an occupational therapist at Hello Robot; and Dr. Charlie Kemp, director of the Healthcare Robotics Lab at Georgia Tech and CTO of Hello Robot.

Phase I explored the use of Stretch, a research robot designed by Kemp & Edsinger, to support everyday activities through use of a lightweight telescoping arm mounted on a mobile base. That research identified home tasks for which support is needed; developed tools to enable Stretch to effectively perform these tasks; and designed an easy-to-use interface that older adults can use to control Stretch to carry out their desired tasks.

The Phase II grant will advance the capabilities of Stretch, in partnership with ClarkLindsey, focusing on physical and cognitive tasks. The aim is to determine how assistive robots can support the needs of older adults with cognitive impairment in addition to those with mobility impairment. The researchers plan to refine the remote control interface to be used by caregivers, develop autonomous activities for Stretch, and explore Stretch’s utility in a variety of home environments, including common rooms with multiple people. 

The goal is to create a scalable, affordable, flexible Stretch Cognitive and Physical Assistant that can improve the quality of life for older adults with a range of cognitive and physical impairments, the researchers say.

In addition to ClarkLindsey, research and testing for this grant will be conducted at the McKechnie Family LIFE Home on the University of Illinois campus.
 

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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Boppart research to boost astronaut fitness on NASA’s mission to Mars

Dec. 15, 2022 | Jenna Kurtzweil

Harnessing the power of cells could be key to preserving astronauts’ fitness in low-gravity conditions.

From left, chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Hyun Joon Kong, kinesiology and community health professors Nicholas Burd and Marni Boppart, psychology professor Justin Rhodes, and chemistry professor Jonathan Sweedler are gathered at Freer Hall.

Exercise looks a little different en route to the Red Planet, so Professor Marni Boppart got creative.

Boppart and her colleagues at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology received $1 million from the Translational Research Institute for Space Health, a NASA-funded institute, to explore the regenerative power of cells in space. Their research will help protect human health aboard Orion, the spacecraft destined to ferry astronauts from the Earth to the moon and Mars.

Because of the Earth’s mass, our daily movement is generally sufficient to keep our muscles in fine working order. Astronauts soaring through space are not afforded the luxury of gravitational pull.

“Astronauts can lose up to 20% of muscle mass after just two weeks, and 1-2% of bone mineral density every month. The longer the space travel, the greater the deterioration of tissues and physiological systems in the human body,” said Boppart, a professor of kinesiology and community health studying the science of exercise at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Before joining the university, Boppart specialized in high-altitude health hazards as an officer and aerospace physiologist in the U.S. Air Force. Her current research in the College of Applied Health Sciences focuses on the molecular underpinning of muscle loss and gain. She hopes to develop cell-inspired strategies for recovering strength in circumstances — like spaceflight — when movement and mobility are limited.

When TRISH invited researchers to explore new ways to protect astronaut health and performance by enhancing the human body’s own maintenance and cellular repair abilities, Boppart seized the opportunity. Her project reimagines interstellar fitness with a cellular flair. The institute was scouting for strategies to protect astronaut health during long-duration space exploration missions, including NASA’s ongoing Artemis program, which will set up a sustainable presence on the Moon and prepare for future missions to Mars.

The Artemis program’s chosen vessel is the spacecraft Orion, which launched unmanned from the Kennedy Space Center in November. At the top of the vessel’s formidable to-do list is ferrying the first woman and first person of color from the Earth to the moon, followed closely by establishing humanity’s first long-term lunar presence and eventually trekking to the Red Planet.

Square footage is limited on Orion, which assumes the trifold identities of dormitory, dining hall, and control room all in one. The spacecraft is understandably bereft of the specialized resistance and endurance equipment that astronauts have access to on the International Space Station.

“But even the most intense [exercise] protocols performed in space are not sufficient to overcome the negative impacts of microgravity,” said Boppart. “Alternatives to traditional exercise, ideally based on exercise principles, are required.”

Astronauts are the target population for this funded study, but the result could potentially be used to prevent, maintain, or treat a variety of conditions associated with (muscle) inactivity and disuse, including aging, disability, or even disease, which would be exceptionally fulfilling.

Marni Boppart

Professor of Kinesiology and Community Health

With an approach fit for space travel, Boppart’s proposal turns our traditional understanding of exercise on its head — or rather, inside out. Instead of defining exercise by heavy footfalls or flailing limbs, she’s focusing squarely on the cellular relay underway within our muscles.

Honed by relentless evolution, our cells have yet to catch on to the concept of exercising for fun. When we lift heavy weights or engage in rigorous activities, our cells react with a well-intentioned stress response, deploying a battalion of chemicals into the bloodstream to boost our body’s ability to survive future threats. If a weight that once seemed too heavy becomes manageable with time and training, you have your overprotective, stressed-out cells to thank.

These chemical payloads don’t navigate the bloodstream’s harsh terrain on their own. Some are wrapped in a protective lipid layer called an extracellular vesicle, named for its pickup and delivery routes that transfer restorative chemicals from cell to cell.

Boppart believes that the extracellular vesicles our bodies generate after exercising, and the chemicals they contain, can trigger the restorative effects of exercise — even when no exercise has taken place.

“When we exercise, it’s not only our muscles that benefit, but all tissues, including the brain and skin. Our TRISH-sponsored work will directly test the ability of extracellular vesicles released after exercise to protect human health in space,” Boppart said.

The broad aim of Boppart’s study is to use extracellular vesicles generated naturally by volunteers on Earth, or even artificially, to replicate the restorative effect of exercise in astronauts, essentially enabling their muscles to engage in post-exercise recovery without ever having to lift a space-suited finger.

“Astronauts are the target population for this funded study, but the result could potentially be used to prevent, maintain, or treat a variety of conditions associated with inactivity and disuse, including aging, disability, or even disease, which would be exceptionally fulfilling,” Boppart said.

Her interdisciplinary collaborators at the Beckman Institute include: Justin Rhodes, a professor of psychology; Taher Saif, a professor of mechanical science and engineering; Jonathan Sweedler, a professor of chemistry; and Hyun Joon Kong, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. UIUC professor of kinesiology and community health Nicholas Burd is also a co-investigator.

Research for the project titled “Design of an extracellular vesicle approach to protect human health in space” is expected to begin in October 2023. The $1 million award will be dispersed over two years. This study is funded by the Translational Research Institute for Space Health at Baylor College of Medicine. TRISH is funded by the NASA Human Research Program. The award was administered through the TRISH Biomedical Research Advances for Space Health solicitation.

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A Few Minutes With … Jacob Allen

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Jan. 04, 2021 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

AHS media relations specialist Vince Lara speaks with Jacob Allen, an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health, to discuss his research on how diet, exercise and stress influence the gut microbia community.

Transcript

VINCE LARA: Hi, and welcome to another edition of A Few Minutes With, the podcast that showcases Illinois College of Applied Health Sciences. I’m Vince Lara, and today, I’m speaking with KCH Assistant Professor Jacob Allen about his research on how exercise, stress, and diet influence gut microbial communities.

So I’m talking with Jacob Allen, who is a new addition to the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health. And, Jacob, I notice from your CV that you had done your undergrad and master’s at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And yet you left Chapel Hill, which is a lovely place in which I lived for a while, for Chambana, which we’re covered in snow this morning. Tell me, what made you do that? What prompted your move here?

JACOB ALLEN: That’s a good question. Well, so I did my bachelor’s in exercise science with a minor in biology. And coming out of undergrad, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do– surprise, surprise, a little bit young. But I was interested in exercise physiology, and so I decided to stay on and do a master’s program in the Exercise Physiology group at UNC-Chapel Hill.

And I did my masters in working with breast cancer survivors, where we looked at how exercise affected inflammatory markers in these patients that were coming off of breast cancer treatments to see if exercise could reduce some of the systemic inflammation they experienced. So that was my foray into exercise. And then because I was looking at inflammatory markers, these proteins called cytokines in the blood, I started getting interested in immunology.

And at the time, and still is, Jeff Woods, Dr. Woods here at University of Illinois, was prominent and one of the few exercise immunologists in the field. So I figured if I was going to study exercise and study the immune system, I should probably go get a PhD with somebody that knows what they’re doing. And so I looked up Jeff’s name and gave him a call.

And that’s what started my process of moving to Champaign to do my PhD in 2013 to look at exercise and the immune system. And so I came to Illinois, and I took off from there, where we started to look at both the immune system, but also the microbes in the gut and how the microbes affect the immune system. So I guess it was more of a career path that took me from Chapel Hill, where it’s a little bit warmer, to Champaign, Illinois.

VINCE LARA: Right, yeah, absolutely. And then the opportunity to work with Jeff obviously is a big part of it.

JACOB ALLEN: Right, yup, it was, definitely.

VINCE LARA: Yeah. So you talked about how your research focuses on exercise and diet and how they influence gut microbiota. What led you to study that? Usually there’s some sort of inspiration to what a researcher decides to study. Was there something in your early life that led you to look into that?

JACOB ALLEN: You know what? I wish I could say there was some beautiful epiphany I had or something like that. But I can’t really tag it to anything specific. I’d say I’m interested in questions that we don’t understand, and that’s probably why I did biology.

And when I started in Jeff’s lab, there was this emerging topic of the microbiome and these trillions of microbes that live in our gut that we still don’t know exactly what they do. And so it kind of just spiraled into studying it. Again, like I said, I was an exercise scientist looking at how exercise affects breast cancer survivors.

And it got me interested in the immune system. And then being interested in the immune system led me to study the microbiome. And what we know now is that the microbes in our gut are really important for training the immune system and establishing the immune system, and then in many inflammatory diseases, affecting the immune system. And so the study of the microbes tied in directly with my interest in immunology. And so that’s how I got to studying the gut microbiota.

VINCE LARA: How granular can we get in terms of, if you change one food, if you stop eating one food, can you determine how that affects the gut and how it affects disease?

JACOB ALLEN: That’s a great question. Number one, I’ll say, it depends– depends on the food. We know a lot about– relatively a lot– about certain types of food with regards to the microbiota. One of them is dietary fiber and something that our lab is interested in.

So fiber comes in different forms, but in one of the forms, it’s a soluble, fermentable fiber. And what that means is that it can reach the colon, where most of the microbes are. And the microbes use that fiber as food, as a sugar source.

And so what we know is that by feeding the microbes with this fiber– and again, there’s various types of it– we can change the microbiota quite extensively. What’s still not understood is how different types of fiber feed the microbiota differentially. And does that matter for our health?

And what’s important is that once the microbes get a hold of these– this food type, this fiber– they can degrade it into these bioactive molecules that then affect our immune system. So we’re still trying to understand that process of how the microbes feed off of these– off of our diet. What type of metabolites do they produce? How does that change the microbial communities? And then how does that all affect our immune system and our health is our interest in our lab.

VINCE LARA: What you’ve said is that you wanted to provide a new perspective on environmental conditions and microbiota. Is that tying into what you’re looking into?

JACOB ALLEN: Exactly. You know, our lab is named Integrative Microbiota Lab. And the reason for that is that I think that in science, we’re really good at isolating things and tying down to what we call a mechanism, which is really important. And that’s part of our lab, too.

But in especially humans, as we walk through our daily life, we’re doing all sorts of things. We have different exercise patterns. We have different levels of psychological stress. And that’s another component of my lab, is looking at how stress affects the microbes as well.

And then obviously, we all have different dietary patterns. And so trying to tease out those factors and how they regulate the microbiome in a daily life is the purpose. And my long-term goal of my lab is to look at these individual environmental factors in isolation. And then long-term, how are they all together affecting the microbes in the gut?

VINCE LARA: Can you tease out things like physical stress versus mental stress? Or is that something that you even can separate?

JACOB ALLEN: Another great question. There’s debate among this in the field of how to define stress in humans. And obviously, it’s all based off of the experience of the person.

But we can measure certain biomarkers that correlate heavily with stress. So we know some classical pathways that are activated by psychological stress– the hypothalamic pituitary axis, which ultimately results in the release of a glucocorticoid called cortisol, which I’m sure many are familiar with. And so we can look at levels of cortisol in the blood, but also, more long-term, elevations of cortisol in things like hair roots and stuff like that to see if these individuals are experiencing acute levels of stress, which we all experience, or if they’re experiencing stress on a chronic level on a daily basis, where we see this long-term elevation of hormones associated with stress.

So the short answer is it’s complicated. But we can at least get somewhat of a diagnostic of how stressed people are or individuals are based off of some of the hormonal responses we see in the blood and other tissues.

VINCE LARA: Interesting. You know, you recently received a grant along with Jeff Woods to study age-related dysbiosis and physical resilience. What can you tell me about that project? I mean, first of all, what’s age-related dysbiosis?

JACOB ALLEN: Yeah, so first, the word “dysbiosis,” for those that don’t know, is essentially a broad term to suggest a disrupted microbial community in the gut. And so there’s various forms of, quote, “dysbiosis.” But what we know is that if the community of microbes in your gut is healthy, it usually is fairly stable and goes through similar– has similar patterns amongst individuals that stays fairly stable over time.

What we see with, quote, “dysbiosis” is that those communities become less stable and less even. So you sometimes get what we call pathobiont species that expand in the gut. And these are potentially bacteria that might induce some negative consequence on our immune system or other components of physiology. And so that’s what we term– what we call dysbiosis. And what the age part is that there’s accumulating evidence that aging, getting older, might contribute to some form of dysbiosis.

And what we’re studying with this grant– so it’s a one-year grant funded by the NIH that will hopefully extend into a longer grant– is to see how antibiotic exposure affects the microbiome in aged populations. And there’s a couple of reasons for this. One of them is that aged individuals tend to consume antibiotics more extensively because they’re experiencing more sickness as they get older. And so we want to study it on that level.

And number two, obviously, these antibiotics affect the microbiome. And so we want to see if a, quote, “aged microbiome” responds differentially to antibiotics versus a young, healthy microbiome. And so to test this, we’re using first, a preclinical model, which is a mouse model, to test these hypotheses.

And tying it in, we think that those microbes, if we disrupt them in old animals, there’s going to be consequences both within the gut, but we also think that is affecting their physical resilience– so how well they perform on particular tasks such as exercise tasks. And so that’s our hypothesis going in. And of course, we don’t know the answers yet, and that’s why we’re running the studies.

But we think that the aged animals will respond differentially to the antibiotics and maybe not recover as well. And that might lead to some potential issues with how they move and how they respond to challenges. So that’s the purpose of the grant, if that makes any sense.

VINCE LARA: Yeah, absolutely. How symbiotic is the relationship between exercise and gut health? Does one influence the other more?

JACOB ALLEN: Yeah, that’s a great question. So some of my PhD work showed that exercise changes the microbiome. And it increases some beneficial metabolites that we think are health-promoting.

And one of them is called a short-chain fatty acid that initiates some overall anti-inflammatory and beneficial effects on our tissue. Now, whether it’s, quote, “good” or “bad,” I think we still need to figure out. There’s definitely changes with exercise and the microbiome. But again, trying to delineate the long-term effects and whether it’s good or bad is still up for debate and up for what we need to investigate with our science.

Your other question– does gut health affect exercise? And I think that that’s another open question in the field. Is there some gut-brain signaling that affects motivational behavior to exercise? And that really has not been investigated at all to my knowledge. So I think you bring up a good point. And it’s something we don’t know quite yet.

VINCE LARA: Yeah. You mentioned that you’re hoping that this grant with Jeff is going to be a long-term grant– multiyear. But researchers always have to look to the next thing, right? And so I’m curious what you’re working on or what your next big project might be.

JACOB ALLEN: Yeah. There’s a couple. Currently, I did some work that was independently funded at the end of my postdoc that I was able to take with me to start my lab here in Illinois, focused on some of the stress effects on the microbiome. And so we’re currently, in the lab, really interested in how the microbes interact with the cells that line the gut, called epithelial cells.

And what we found is this really intricate interaction between the gut microbes and these epithelial cells. You think of it as like a tit for tat. As the epithelial cells, which are our cells that line the gut, produce some molecules, they change the microbes. The microbes then feed back and change those epithelial cells.

And what we found is that stress, for some unknown reason, really changes the profile of these epithelial cells. And we’re not sure why yet. But what the evidence is pointing towards is that those changes in epithelial cells with stress is really driving the microbial changes that we see in the gut, and potentially in negative ways.

And so we’re trying to understand that process in a little more detail in our lab currently. So that’s the next frontier where we’re focused. And then we have some other focuses, too, particularly with exercise.

And going back to the integrative portion of it, we’re interested in how exercise and dietary fiber interact to modify the microbiome. We know that both in isolation change the microbiome. But really, not a lot of work has been done with a focus on how the interaction of diet and exercise might change the microbes and what that might mean for our health. So that’s another focus of the lab currently as well.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to Jacob Allen. For more podcasts on Illinois’s College of Applied Health Sciences, search A Few Minutes With on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Radio.com, and other places you get your podcast fix. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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Skating career led to kinesiology studies for Weinstein

April 08, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

It was a circuitous route to the University of Illinois for Lindsay Weinstein

Lindsay Weinstein recently found out she was accepted into the Doctor of Physical Therapy program at the University of Illinois at Chicago

At one time in her life, Lindsay Weinstein thought admitting she needed a physical therapist meant she was “weak.” Now she is studying to be one.

The four-time national medalist figure skater is now a kinesiology major in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Weinstein, 22, recently found out she was accepted into the Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, one of the top DPT programs in the country.

It was a circuitous route to the University of Illinois for Weinstein, a Buffalo Grove, Ill., native who left home at the age of 15 to train at the U.S. Olympic Training Center for Figure Skating in Colorado Springs, Colo. But for Weinstein, the ice patch began long before that.

“A lot of parents from my hometown put their kids into beginner skating around the age of three,” Weinstein said. “Around that age, my older brother had best friends performing in the local ice show at the rink that would end up becoming my home rink. And my parents took me and my brother to go watch it. And I’m watching them on the ice, and I looked up at my mom, and I was, like, ‘I can do that. I know I can do that.’ And my mom replied, ‘Whatever.’”

Weinstein’s mother had been reluctant to sign her up because her brother had not enjoyed skating and “made my mom’s life miserable. Every time they got to the rink, he would start crying. She (said) ‘I’m not signing you up. I don’t want to go through that again.’”

But Weinstein did not relent.

“Being the three-year-old little menace that I was, every time we drove past the rink, I would say, ‘Well have you signed me up? Have you signed me up? Why haven’t you signed me up? I know I can do that. Why haven’t you signed me up?’ And I just kept insisting that I could do it.

And so finally, I would say it took four months before they finally did it. And I got on the ice, and it was just like true love.”

It might have been love, but it was not always easy, Weinstein admits.

“You learn from a very early age in figure skating that it’s not a sport that you can be in halfway,” she said. “It’s not a sport that’s like a hobby. I was skating at 6:20 a.m. before school, getting picked up at 7:30, being taken to school. I had a special schedule. So I’d get picked up from school at maybe like 2 p.m., three periods before anyone else. And I would go back to the rink and go skate. It was my life. I wasn’t doing normal things, like having sleepovers, like the other kids were.”

Starting at the tender age of six, Weinstein began competing in the U.S. Figure Skating Association (USFSA) events. She competed for several years as a singles competitor but found her true passion was in pairs skating. By May 2013, she had partnered with Jacob Simon, and in their first season together, they won the pewter medal (fourth place) in the Novice level at the 2014 U.S. Championships. After this competition, Weinstein and Simon were named to Team USA and sent on several international assignments to compete at the Junior level on behalf of the United States of America.

At the 2015 U.S. Championships, the team earned another pewter medal, this time at the Junior level. Around this time, U.S. Figure Skating approached Weinstein and Simon about moving to Colorado to train at a more elite facility. Her partner, a senior in high school, planned to either go to college or to Colorado to train.

“At 14, I was put in a position where ‘Do I want to do this for a living? Am I willing to give up a normal high school life, a normal kid life for this?’ And I made the decision, ‘Yes, it is worth it to me,” she said.

Weinstein and Simon—without their parents—moved to Colorado Springs to train at the Olympic Training Center. Skating was the top priority, not school.

“College wasn’t necessarily on my agenda. I wasn’t looking at colleges,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking about college. I was thinking about getting through high school, and I was thinking about my skating career.”

That career began to bloom. Coached by Dalilah Sappenfield and Drew Meekins, Weinstein and Simon won the junior silver medal at the 2016 U.S. Championships and were named to the U.S. team for the 2016 World Junior Championships in Debrecen, Hungary. The pair finished ninth overall in Hungary.

“That was definitely the highlight of both of our careers,” she said. “The season following was a tad difficult due to being a female, you start going through body changes. There is a lot of emphases and talk about body and eating.”

Around that time is when Weinstein first thought about kinesiology, although she didn’t know what kinesiology was at the time.

“I would say that was when I got my first pique of interest in physical therapy,” she said. “I have never been someone who had been injured. I had known so many people who had been off the ice with injuries. And I just was super lucky. I had never been injured. (But) when I moved to Colorado, and we were training at a more elite level, I started to feel a lot of impact on my knees.”

Reluctantly during that successful 2016 season, Weinstein started seeing a physical therapist.

“I hid the fact that my knees hurt,” she said. “I hid the fact from my coach. I hid the fact from my parents. And then finally the pain became too much. My right knee was my landing knee, and I was just wincing every single time I landed.”

Friends and colleagues advised her to see a physical therapist, “but I thought going to a physical therapist meant I was weak. I did not want to see one, which is interesting because now I am starting to become a physical therapist.”

That year was a turning point in many ways for Weinstein.

She and Simon were under pressure to stay certain sizes, and Weinstein especially felt “under a microscope” as she went through puberty at age 16. The Olympics, she realized, likely would not happen. Then 2017 became a year of change as she and Simon broke up—both professionally and romantically—and she decided to leave Colorado, where she felt mistreated by Sappenfield. Weinstein was one of several skaters to file complaints against Sappenfield with the United States Center for SafeSport, leading to Sappenfield’s suspension in October 2021 pending further investigation.

Weinstein ended up moving to Aliso Viejo, Calif., to train and rediscover her love for figure skating. But she also discovered something else.

“It helped me realize as much as I love this and as much as I am the person I am today because of skating, I’m ready to move on to something else,” she said.

That something else was physical therapy. A physical therapist who was treating her in California recommended applying to San Diego State; her father was convinced she needed to apply to more than one school, and she chose the University of Illinois, her dad’s alma mater. She got into both and chose San Diego State, but the temptations of the Southern California lifestyle made it challenging to stay academically motivated, Weinstein admitted.

But that changed when she transferred to Illinois.

“I’ve made Dean’s List every semester here,” she said. “The choice to come here, in particular, had a lot to do with proximity because I had been away from home since 15. And when I was in college at San Diego, I just realized it was way harder to be away from home in college.”

Weinstein, who will graduate in May, knew graduate school was the next step, but also knew she didn’t want to leave Illinois again. There are seven accredited DPT programs in Illinois, four in the Chicago area, close to home. She applied to Rosalind Franklin, Midwestern University, UIC, and Northwestern University, with UIC her top choice.

“I’d love to be in a big city,” she said, explaining her decision. “I’d love to not have to make all new friends again because I had to do that for San Diego and then again coming here to Illinois. Yes, UIC was my top choice, and I did get in.”

Weinstein knows a long road remains to complete her doctorate. But she knew the kinesiology program itself was no cakewalk.

“I will never forget sitting at my very first lecture and the advisor at San Diego (State) coming in and looking around the room and saying, ‘Most of you will not get into grad school. Honestly, a good portion of this room will probably not even be a kinesiology major next semester. This is a really hard major, and you will not achieve your dreams.’ And every semester that I made it through, I would just thank my lucky stars that I made it through,” she said.

After she completes her DPT program, Weinstein definitely has an idea of which populations she’d like to work with.

“I got into this as an athlete. And if I had the ideal situation that could come about for me, I would love to be a PT for a sports team. I would love to go watch practices, learn why injuries are happening, learn how to prevent them in specific regards to one specific sport.”

If not athletes, she’ll turn to another passion: children.

“I have always loved kids. I was the girl, who at 10 years old, was being driven to babysit. I adore kids. And if I could somehow go into (pediatrics), that would be my other dream. I feel like it would be awesome as a PT to work with girls that are around the same age as I was when things started kind of getting messy. And I can be there as somewhat of a guide to let them know the rights and wrongs of when someone’s talking about their body and body image and eating and eating disorders and depression. I do think that I could definitely make a huge impact as a PT for all people, whether athletes or not.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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MS-HT’s first class finds quick employment

March 02, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Amrutha Kumaran

Besides being the first six graduates of the Master of Science in Health Technology (MS-HT) program in the College of Applied Health Sciences, the inaugural class had another thing to celebrate.

The six students, Marlene Robles Granda, Gabrielle Choo-Kang, Asif Huq, Tia King, Amrutha Kumaran and Neva Manalil, celebrated the completion of their degrees with a capstone presentation and award ceremony on Aug. 3, 2021. By the end of the year, they were all employed.

Robles Granda, for example, landed as a data scientist at OSF Healthcare. She credited the MS-HT program for helping “decide my career path.”

“Before the MS-HT, I worked as a software engineer to positively impact people’s lives either by automating manual processes to help people in their daily activities. After I graduated, I could achieve my goal to blend my previous skills and knowledge with the knowledge of health technology. Now, I know what factors influence people to use technology and how to design health tech according to the needs of people. My skills developed in the MSHT allowed me to get into the healthcare system.”

The College of Applied Health Sciences, in collaboration with Grainger College of Engineering, developed the interdisciplinary MS-HT aimed at training professionals in improving the quality of life, health, and independence for people of all ages and abilities to maintain health and wellness; to manage chronic conditions; and to recover from injury or medical treatment.

The students are trained in software application, hardware engineering, human factors, and user-centered design, among other things in a program led by renowned researcher Dr. Wendy Rogers and associate director Dr. Nicole Holtzclaw-Stone.

Another of the first graduates, Tia King, said she was drawn to the MS-HT program because it “seemed really customizable. I knew I loved healthcare but also loved the idea of designing things. It seemed like I would be able to do both of those things with this program. Also talking with (Holtzclaw-Stone) prior was extremely helpful. She set up a meeting right away and answered all my questions (and continued to do so throughout the program).”

King said the MS-HT program led to a diversion in her plan.

“I thought that I wanted to be a clinical psychologist prior to this program,” she said. “When I was accepted into the program, I wanted to look at athletes and wearable devices, given I had played sports my entire life. But through (Dr. Tim Hale’s) courses (Human Factors and Understanding Users), I knew the route that I wanted to take was (user interface and user experience).”

King said Hale’s courses “allowed me to find my career path.”

King, who landed at Curo Financial Technologies Corp. in Chicago as a product coordinator, said her new employer specifically mentioned MS-HT as a reason she was hired.

“The program was mentioned because I would bring a fresh perspective to the team, and how they view users given I was doing the FinTech field with a healthcare background,” King said. “My employer seemed interested in the length of the program and the skills I was able to learn.”

Robles Granda agreed.

“They haven’t told me directly about that, but every time they introduced me to a new peer, they say, ‘Marlene graduated from the new MS-HT program that UIUC offers.’ I strongly believe that MS-HT is the reason I was hired for this job.”

Dr. Jonathan Handler, a senior fellow on the OSF Healthcare Innovation team who is Robles Granda’s supervisor, said Robles Granda was absolutely correct.

“The MS-HT program was a key factor in hiring Marlene,” he said. “We would not have known of her availability and strong fit for our needs had we not had a relationship with the program and her professors who reached out and recommended her.”

Holtzclaw-Stone said the program is already showing growth, going from a class of six the first year to eight this year, with further growth planned for upcoming cohorts.

“We are so thrilled that our first cohort of graduates found jobs and that companies and organizations are recognizing the importance of an MS-HT degree, as well as the skills our students have acquired,” she said.

Handler said he would not hesitate to hire more MS-HT grads.

“Marlene has had an excellent start with us and we are thrilled to have her!,” he said. “We hope MS-HT graduates will consider joining us as new opportunities arise.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email naverett@illinois.edu.
 

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MS-HT’s Class of 2021: Tia King

March 11, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

The first graduates of the Master of Science in Health Technology program in the College of Applied Health Sciences all landed jobs within four months. We spoke to some of them about why they picked MS-HT, how MS-HT helped them decide on their career, and what they most enjoyed about the program. This time we speak with Tia King.

Tia King is one of six MS-HT students who quickly landed employment after graduating

Q: What attracted you to the University of Illinois?

A: I The attraction started in undergrad. I transferred here for the start of my junior year and fell in love with the campus and faculty. I quickly got involved with club sports and activities so, Champaign-Urbana felt like home.

Q: Why did you pick the MS-HT program?

A: The program seemed really customizable. I knew I loved healthcare but also loved the idea of designing things. It seemed like I would be able to do both of those things with this program. Also talking with (Associate Director) Nicole (Holtzclaw-Stone) prior was extremely helpful. She set up a meeting right away and answered all my questions (and continued to do so throughout the program).

Q: Did the MS-HT program help you decide a career path?

A: It really did, I thought that I wanted to be a clinical psychologist prior to this program. When I was accepted into the program, I wanted to look at athletes and wearable devices, given I had played sports my entire life. But through (Dr. Tim Hale’s) courses (Human Factors and Understanding Users), I knew the route that I wanted to take was UI/UX.

Q: What did you learn that you immediately applied in your new job?

A: I almost immediately became the UX expert for our team, given that was my major focus during my time in the program. An example of some UX work I have done thus far is designing what the process should look like for customers with a prescreened offer.

Q: Did your new employer mention your MS-HT program as a reason you were hired?

A: Yes, for multiple reasons.The program was mentioned because I would bring a fresh perspective to the team, and how they view users given I was doing the FinTech field with a healthcare background (this is the case for someone else on my team too!). Something else my employer seemed interested in was the length of the program and the skills I was able to learn. And two other members on my team also attended UIUC, so maybe there is some bias there, ha!

Q: What was your favorite part of the MS-HT program?

A: LOVED Tim’s courses, because they allowed me to find my career path. I really enjoyed the team hardware project, where we built a hydraulic boot that could support patients. This was something that was completely out of my comfort zone, and difficult but I learned so much.

Q: What one thing did you take away from MS-HT that you feel was most important to your career?

A: Learning how to be collaborative. This is crucial for my role, given I have multiple meetings a day, where I have to share/update what I am doing and get feedback. This is similar to the structure of the courses we had with Tim, so this part of the job doesn’t feel overwhelming!

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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MS-HT’s Class of 2021: Marlene Robles Granda

Feb. 11, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

The first graduates of the Master of Science in Health Technology program in the College of Applied Health Sciences all landed jobs within four months. We spoke to some of them about why they picked MS-HT, how MS-HT helped them decide on their career, and what they most enjoyed about the program. This time we speak with Marlene Robles Granda.

Class of 2021: From left to right: Neva Manalil, Gabrielle Choo-Kang, Amrutha Kumaran, Marlene Robles Granda, Asif Huq, and Tia King.

Q: What attracted you to the University of Illinois?

A: One of the things I am passionate about is continuously learning. I was looking for an option that allows me to learn from knowledgeable professors in the field I was diving into, and networking with people with different backgrounds. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I found a niche, because it has a high academic reputation and has one of the largest academic populations. I came to UIUC because I want to be in a place that could open the door to gain and reinforce my skills and where I could meet great people whom I could trust and call friends.

Q: Why did you pick the MS-HT program?

A: As a computer scientist, I love technology and how this can improve people’s lives, enhancing their independence, communication, and health. I am passionate to design and build solutions that have a broader social impact. I think we can use technology as a bridge to reduce gaps of people affected by social factors. I found the MS-HT a very exciting opportunity because it is an intensive one-year program with a curriculum very attractive to me. It conveys knowledge of user’s behaviors towards technology use, user-centered design, human factors, software, and hardware among others, focused on health. Those topics and the skills needed to succeed in this program train professionals that stand out among others. This is an advantage in the U.S. job market, which is very competitive.

Q: Did the MS-HT program help you decide a career path?

A: MS-HT helped me to decide my career path. It really did. Before the MS-HT, I worked as a software engineer to positively impact people’s lives either by automating manual processes to help people in their daily activities, introducing new tools for decision-making, or improving the quality of the computer services for communication purposes. After I graduated, I could achieve my goal to blend my previous skills and knowledge with the knowledge of health technology. Now, I know what factors influence people to use technology and how to design health tech according to the needs of people. My skills developed in the MS-HT allowed me to get into the healthcare system. Right now, I’m applying my knowledge and skills to my new position as a data scientist at OSF Healthcare, collaborating in the Digital Health Innovation team.

Q: What did you learn that you immediately applied in your new job?

A: What I learned from the MS-HT that I immediately applied in my new job (was) the health data analysis and technical communication skills. Right now I am a member of a multidisciplinary team focused on digital health innovation. I am working on research projects, ideating and designing solutions based on data-driven analysis to mitigate the challenges that patients face. Thus, communication is a key component of a team to achieve shared goals and transmit results to stakeholders. Also, problem-solving and management skills help me to do important contributions and be up-to-date in my activities as a member of my team.

Q: Did your new employer mention your MS-HT program as a reason you were hired?

A: They haven’t told me directly about that, but every time they introduced me to a new peer, they say, “Marlene graduated (from) the new master’s degree MS-HT that UIUC offers.” I strongly believe that MSHT is the reason I was hired for this job.

Q: What was your favorite part of the MS-HT program?

A: My favorite part of the MS-HT program was the capstone project experience. It helped me to improve my software development, data science, communication, organizational, problem-solving, and time-management skills. Furthermore, it allowed me to expand my professional network and work in a similar scenario as the industry is. Sharing with collaborators and facing challenges as in a real-world scenario, was fascinating to me. It gave me a boost in my professional career.

Q: What one thing did you take away from MS-HT that you feel was most important to your career?

A: The master’s degree opened my eyes to know how health technologies should be designed and created to satisfy users’ needs. It was through the MS-HT program that I realized how important it is to consider the users’ needs first for ideating and designing solutions. Also, I enjoyed all the activities throughout this awesome experience: the lectures, the assignments, the finals, the team projects, the course meetings, the capstone project. Everything I learned and experienced in my journey as a student of the MS-HT was immensely satisfying. Even the constraints that I faced helped me to be patient, resourceful, and develop strengths I didn’t experience before. I am grateful to have met awesome professors and fellow students who I trust and appreciate.

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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Alumni Spotlight—Ariana Mazza Bensyl

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Dec. 09, 2021 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Alumni of the College of Applied Health Sciences have myriad career options thanks to the tremendous diversity of programs. We periodically will put the spotlight on an alum to find out what they’re doing now, what experiences they had and what AHS means to them. This week, we talk to Ariana Mazza Bensyl, a KCH alum who now works as a Physical Therapist in Northbrook School District 28.

Q: Why did you pick AHS?

A: Being active in sports growing up fostered my interest in exercise and how the body works. I knew going into college that I wanted to be a Physical Therapist. When I was looking into colleges, I was looking for one that provided me the opportunity to get a great education and prepare me for PT school. The College of Applied Health Sciences offered Kinesiology as a program of study, which fit my PT path. I was confident the curriculum would prepare me for getting into PT school, as well as the academic demands of PT school.

Q: Which professors had the most impact on you?

A: One person that most impacted me was my academic advisor, Amy O’Neill. She encouraged me to challenge myself and work hard to attain my goals throughout my time at the University of Illinois. Amy also brought the idea of completing the Physical Education Teacher Licensure program to my attention. I completed the Pedagogy track within Kinesiology and I really enjoyed it. Dr. Amy Woods was one of my professors who saw a lot of potential in me and pushed me to be a better teacher. Another professor that had an impact on me was Mary Carlton. She had such passion and excitement for what she was teaching that it made learning exciting!

Q: What course did you most enjoy?

A: I really enjoyed my Injuries in Sport class. Learning about injuries, how to tape an ankle, preventative care and emergency care was cool! Especially for a kid who had her ankles taped throughout her high school sports career. I also really enjoyed Psychophysiology in Exercise & Sport.

Q: Did you enter AHS knowing your career path, or did AHS help you decide?

A: I did enter AHS knowing my career path. I knew I wanted to go to PT school, but I thought I wanted to work in the sports world of physical therapy. When I was doing my student teaching, I learned that physical therapists could also work in the school environment. This opened my eyes to a different path within physical therapy that was interesting to me and has actually taken me to my current job.

Q: Did your AHS experience lead to your current job?

A: Yes, it did lead me to my current job. My time in AHS prepared me to get into and be successful in PT school. I have received my doctorate of Physical Therapy from Northwestern University (’14) and am currently a PT in Northbrook School District 28. I have been able to combine the love of education and teaching that I learned from my time in AHS with my passion for physical therapy.

Q: What was your favorite on-campus experience?

A: I was part of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority during my time on campus. Creating so many memories and lifelong friendships with my sorority sisters really made for many favorite on-campus experiences. Not necessarily an on-campus experience, but an experience related to my time in AHS, was meeting my husband. A colleague I met while doing my student teaching introduced me to him. He is a fellow AHS ’11 graduate! We have talked about how we were probably in some of the same intro KIN classes our freshmen year but didn’t know it!

Q: What does AHS mean to you?

A: The University of Illinois is such a big university and being part of AHS made it feel smaller. The professors and academic advisors in AHS really created an environment where I felt they wanted me to succeed. AHS means being part of a community that truly cares about their students.

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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McKechnie Family LIFE Home opening a milestone for Wendy Rogers

Oct. 08, 2021 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

The McKechnie Family LIFE Home is a cutting-edge research center focused on innovations in home environments

Jim and Karen McKechnie are the primary donors for the McKechnie Family LIFE Home

Even for someone as accomplished as Kinesiology and Community Health Professor Wendy Rogers, the night of Oct. 7 represented a milestone.

Rogers has so many appointments and affiliations—she is a Khan Professor of Applied Health Sciences; she directs the Collaborations in Health, Aging, Research, and Technology, or CHART, initiative in AHS; the Health Technology Education Program, which offers a one-of-a-kind master’s degree in health technology; and the Human Factors and Aging Laboratory—that during her introduction for the dedication of the McKechnie Family LIFE Home on Oct. 7, College of Applied Health Sciences Dean Cheryl Hanley-Maxwell had to pause and catch her breath.

But with all the federal funding Rogers has received and the collaborations she’s sparked, the McKechnie Family LIFE Home holds a special and unique place for her.

The McKechnie Family LIFE Home is a cutting-edge research center focused on innovations in home environments. This facility mimics existing home dwellings as well as provides space for the development of next generation smart homes that would allow people of all ages and abilities to live fuller, healthier, and autonomous lives.

“I am delighted that the name of the facility is the Family LIFE Home because that is what home is all about—family,” Rogers said during the dedication ceremony. “Family has always been at the heart of my life and my work. I am the youngest of six children. I grew up in a small house in Massachusetts—we had eight people in a three-bedroom home with one bathroom—imagine that. We had no choice but to be close.”

Rogers said that of her inspiration for creating a facility such as the LIFE Home is that because of the support of her and her siblings, her parents were able to continue living until their final days in the family home.

“I remember when my Dad was near the end of his life (back in 2005) and we were all coordinating his care, he said to me, “We need more of that smart technology of yours,”’ Rogers told attendees of the dedication ceremony, which included University of Illinois Chancellor Robert Jones and Jim and Karen McKechnie, the primary donors of the LIFE Home.

“After he died and my mom, was alone we certainly relied on technology tools to remain connected with her and to provide the support she needed,” Rogers said.

That is Rogers’ goal for the McKechnie Family LIFE Home.

“Our vision is to develop technologies that can support quality of life in the home for everyone, people of all ages and abilities. We want to think about all of the activities that occur in the home from fundamental activities of daily living such as bathing, eating, mobility through to the enhanced activities of daily living such as social engagement, community participation, and lifelong learning.”

For Chancellor Jones, the opening of the facility was the culmination of what the university sought in bringing Rogers aboard.

“Professor Rogers, in some ways, today marks the completion of a full circle for the two of us,” Jones said. “I had the honor of speaking at your investiture ceremony just a few months after I came here to Illinois. You were recruited here under one of the initiatives laid out in the university’s Visioning Future Excellence strategic plan. And now, just four years later, we can draw a bright and clear line from that starting point to today’s dedication of the McKechnie Family LIFE Home.”

To an observer, the LIFE Home looks like someone’s home: it has two bedrooms, a bathroom, an open-concept kitchen—we all know, thanks to HGTV how popular that is these days—a living room, dining room and even some green space outside. But the LIFE Home is foremost a research facility. The site is available for use by researchers from within and outside the university, or for collabortions with companies who want to use the facility to conduct research and test new products.

You can find more information about the McKechnie Family LIFE Home here.

“It is a space in which researchers from across the campus, industry partners, healthcare providers, and community stakeholders can come together to develop and test technologies that support all dimensions of healthy, socially connected, independent living,” Dean Hanley-Maxwell said.

Chancellor Jones praised the McKechnies for their generosity and said, “I don’t think there are any more visible examples of the impact of private investment in public universities. These gifts are direct investments in ideas and in human potential. They are feeding the true heart of this college and this university.”

And as much as the dedication ceremony of the facility proved to be a key step, Rogers said there was much still to do.

“It really has been a labor of love –we are all passionate about improving people’s quality of life and believe in the potential of this space to support that mission. This is only the beginning.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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