Brown Bag Series Continues Featuring Sophie Orr on October 18th

The fall semester Brown Bag Seminar Series features graduate students providing presentations on their current research or recent internships.

This series of presentations will be held in the Space Studies Library at noon.  Please join us with your own “brown bag” lunch.

Our second presentation in this series will feature Sophie Orr on Wednesday, October 18th.

Presentation title:  “Moving around on Mars: Literally just a jump, skip, and a hop?”

About the topic:  Sophie received NDSGC Fellowship funding for her on-going thesis research, which focuses on human locomotion in simulated fractional gravity environments. Past efforts have focused on the energy difference between different locomotion methods in fractional gravity at different speeds, suggesting that skipping is energetically more efficient than walking and running in these environments. While this may be more beneficial from an energy standpoint it is important to understand the full range of reasons behind the gait transition. Humans tend to change from walking to running near a pace of the 4.5mph due to a perceived decrease in effort expenditure. However, walking is actually less energy demanding than running at this speed, but the strain on the dorsiflexor muscles increases. In a space environment, these factors will play a role in astronaut health and injury prevention. By using electromyography and a motion capture system to assess the impact of these types of locomotion in simulated fractional gravity environments, we can help determine which locomotion methods are most advantageous to astronauts.

About the presenter:   Sophie is a second-year Space Studies Masters student from California. Her undergraduate degree in Anthropology has spurred her interest in the application of human evolution to problems regarding physiological adaptation to space environments.