Bloorview Research Institute

The Ward family summer student research program project descriptions

Evdokia Anagnostou

At the Autism Research Centre, you will be a member of an interdisciplinary team of researchers who develop technologies for children with autism spectrum disorders.

You will work closely with scientists and engineers to design, implement and test intelligent mobile applications that deliver treatments and interventions for children with autism. In particular, you will work on applications that interact with children to help them better learn social concepts and to improve their social skills. You will be involved in hardware and software development and gain practical experience in working with children with autism. 

Elaine Biddiss

Tom Chau

Summer students will be engaged in various aspects of the development and evaluation of novel access technologies for children and youth in collaboration with the prismlab and Sunny View Infinity Lab teams. Potential project areas include: optical brain-computer interfaces, transcranial Doppler ultrasound brain-computer interface, inertial sensing of head movements, in-ear pressure monitoring of tongue movements, thermographic imaging, digital voice enhancement, vocal fold vibration sensing, otoacoustic emissions, and physiological synchrony.

Sally Lindsay

Sally Lindsay is a scientist within the Participation and Inclusion theme. Her research focuses on chronic disease self-management, youth and employment, transitions to adulthood, discrimination and exclusion, and culturally sensitive care. The summer student will be involved in one of the following projects (depending on their interests and experience):

1. Employment readiness and skills gaps amongst adolescents with and without disabilities.
2. Working with immigrant families in pediatric rehabilitation: exploring service providers’ successes and challenges with providing culturally sensitive care.
   
3. Exploring educators challenges and successes of including children with autism spectrum disorder in mainstream classes.

Amy McPherson

The summer student will be engaged in a systematic review of physical activity and dietary interventions for children with physical disabilities. This will include rigorous literature searches, assessing titles, obtaining relevant journal articles, judging quality according to set criteria, and synthesising the overall evidence. In addition, the student may participate in other studies focusing on the participation and inclusion of children with disabilities, according to need. Students with a health or social sciences background are encouraged to apply. Experience in literature reviewing would be an advantage.

Steve Ryan

Unni Narayanan

Dr. Unni Narayanan is a pediatric Orthopaedic surgeon and clinical epidemiologist, based at the Hospital for Sick Children and the Research Institute at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. His research program is devoted to the exploration of patient priorities and the development and validation of meaningful outcome measures to evaluate the effectiveness of various interventions for children with chronic physical disabilities such as cerebral palsy (CP). For the summer of 2012, the student research project will focus on the development and further validation of a new outcome measure for kids abnormal gait affected by various conditions including Cerebral Palsy and other pediatric orthopaedic disorders. The student will also be involved in the Gait Analysis Randomized trial and will do pilot testing and make revisions to a newly developed online database for an international multicentre randomized controlled trial (RCT) exploring the effect the addition of gait laboratory analysis may have on functional outcomes following multi-level orthopaedic surgery. The student/s will have the opportunity to interact with and interview children (and their parents), and to test the reliability and validity of a new measure. This experience will expose the student to the concepts pertinent to development and validation of patient reported outcome measures and their use in clinical trials.

Virginia Wright

Gross motor measures research in CP
Virginia Wright is requesting a student in 3rd or 4th Year University in a life science/health science related program. Virginia’s program of measurement research fits best with students who are thinking of applying to OT or PT and preference is given to them. She is also keen to have a student who has worked with school age children in a recreation or health care context. Strong organizational and communication skills are needed, and an undergraduate statistics course would be a definite asset.

Back to The Ward Family Summer Student Research Program

Select Text Size

• Adjust text size: Small Aa
• Adjust text size: Medium Aa
• Adjust text size: Large Aa