ISE Seminar: Gregory Gerling

Details

Title:
Evaluating naturalistic touch interactions with soft objects and in human interactions and soft tissue assessment

Abstract:
By integrating engineering, neuroscience, biomechanics, and human-centered design, I will describe our research to bridge gaps between fundamental touch encoding and clinical applications for musculoskeletal health. In particular, our investigations into object compliance (or softness) reveal that temporal force-rate and contact area-rate cues and physical skin properties—specifically the inherent softness of the finger pad often observed in women—significantly enhance tactile acuity. This understanding of discriminative touch is extended into social and emotional interactions in affective touch through naturalistic, unscripted paradigms, which demonstrate that those in close relationships convey subtle distinctions in touch readily recognizable and specific mechanoreceptive afferent subtypes differentiate social touch expressions at unique, social-relevant time scales. Finally, these insights into skin deformation and contact are applied to address myofascial pain by defining objective, strain-based mechanical biomarkers. Using 3D digital image correlation to measure lateral tissue mobility, this research establishes a quantitative link to patient-reported pain, providing a foundation for personalized, evidence-based soft tissue therapeutics.

Bio:
Gregory J. Gerling serves as Interim Chair and Professor of Systems & Information Engineering at the University of Virginia, with courtesy appointments in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering. His group’s research interests are related to fields of haptics, human-machine interaction, human factors and ergonomics, biomechanics, and computational neuroscience. He teaches courses tied to human-machine interaction and user experience design. He has served as co-chair of the IEEE Haptics Symposium in 2018 and 2020, chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics, and Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Haptics and is currently serving as co-chair of the Steering Committee of NIH Force-Based Manipulation High-Priority Research Networks.