Pro Gait

University College Dublin, Ireland’s global university is ranked in the top 1% of Higher Education Institutions Worldwide. It is the largest University in Ireland with over 1,500 registered PhD students.

The School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science at UCD is a dynamic and multi-disciplinary School that focuses on the education, skills and research required to face the challenges of providing appropriate, cost-effective and equitable health services for the 21st Century. With a student-centred approach to learning and an environment where research and scholarship stimulate high achievement, our graduates contribute to their professions world-wide and enhance the international reputation of our programmes.

The School is at the cutting edge of research internationally and research programmes are organised into distinct hubs of activity: Clinical Epidemiology; Health Services Research; Physiotherapy, Rehabilitation and Health; Sport, Exercise and Health; Food and Health; Occupational and Environmental Studies; Geary Institute Programmes; Connected Health; HRB CSTAR; Cystic Fibrosis Registry.

The Mater Misericordiae University Hospital is a 660 bed Major Teaching Hospital affiliated with University College Dublin, Ireland. It acts as a tertiary referral hospital for multiple medical and surgical specialties for both the Ireland East Hospital Group (catchment population 1.1 million) and the rest of Ireland.

The Stroke Service at the Mater provides a secondary and tertiary referral service and is led by it’s Co-Directors Prof Sean Murphy and Prof Peter Kelly.  The Stroke Unit is one of the first European Stroke Organisation (ESO) certified stroke units in Europe.

The Irish National Stroke Clinical Research Network (ISCRN) is based at the Neurovascular Unit for Translational and Therapeutics Research, Mater University Hospital/University College Dublin and is led by Prof Peter Kelly. Research interests include vascular inflammation, neuroimaging and stroke prevention. The Unit is the Lead Centre for a multi-national randomised trial investigating use of colchicine for secondary prevention in patients with non-disabling stroke and high risk transient ischemic attack (TIA).

The Intelligent Systems Research Centre (ISRC) at Ulster University's Magee Campus in Derry Northern Ireland collaborates with other international centres of excellence, to conduct multidisciplinary research that is bio-inspired, influences our understanding of the brain and enables the creation of impactful technologies that are designed to:

• mine and understand data intelligently in real-time
• create intelligent robotics, devices and networks
• improve and repair brain function 
• enable visualization of the brain
• identify the properties of nervous activity
• diagnose pathological conditions
• interface with the brain

enable people to interact and communicate without moving create intelligent assistive and rehabilitation technologies support the next generation of human-computer interaction The centre hosts the Northern Ireland Functional Brain Mapping Facility which contains the only magnetoencephalography (MEG) neuroimaging system in Ireland (1 of 10 in the UK) and has substantial track record innovating in neuroimaging including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and electroencephalography (EEG).

Dating back to 1222, the University of Padova (UNIPD) is one of the leading Universities in Italy and has a long tradition of scientific excellence. UNIPD offers its students 32 departments, 37 doctoral degree courses and 44 research and service centers across the spectrum of sciences, medicine, social sciences and humanities, with about 2,300 professors and researchers employed. 

UNIPD participated in 196 European Research projects within the 7th Framework Program and in about 40 projects from other EU funds, accounting for more than 70 Million Euro. It currently manages 121 Horizon 2020 actions for a total budget of more than 45 Million Euro. UNIPD has specific expertise on the management of European projects: it coordinated 40 FP7 projects and it has suitable structures and resources dedicated to this end. 

The work will be carried out at the Department of Neuroscience, Section of Rehabilitation, which has a recognized expertise in neurological rehabilitation across a wide network of associated facilities treating people with motor and cognitive impairment due central nervous system lesions or spinal cord injury. A multidisciplinary team and the use of advanced robotic devices and neurostimulation techniques provides an ideal environment for clinical research.

The Department of Neuroscience provides scientific and technical expertise on: 

• Advanced signal analysis [electroencephalography (EEG) and electromyography (EMG)]
• Movement Analysis and Biomechanics (Gait analysis, Baropodometry and Stabilometry)
• Neurostimulation [Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), TMS-EEG co-registration] in neurological disease
• Population-based studies on prognostic determinants of motor recovery after stroke and coma
• Integration of robot and biosignals

g.tec developed the first commercially available BCI system in 1999 and now sells this system in more than 60 countries worldwide. g.tec is a growing enterprise with two branches in Austria (Graz and Schiedlberg), one branch in Spain (Barcelona), one branch in the US (Albany, New York) and distribution partners all over the world.

All hardware and software developments are done in-house by researchers, engineers and developers, and work with all major BCI approaches (motor imagery, P300, SSVEP and slow cortical potentials). g.tec is an active member in a number of national and international research projects and scientific publishing.

g.tec’s BCI technologies have been tested on more than 500 subjects internationally to guarantee a perfect working system.

The Valduce Villa Beretta Rehabilitation Center activity focuses on diagnosis and treatment of: 

1. Cognition: Language disorders, Attention problems, Disorders of action, Recovery from coma.

2. Motor control/mobility: Understanding how movements, such as walking, are planned and carried out in healthy people and  determining how to restore useful movement to people with paralysis, amputation and spasticity. 

3. Outcomes: Measuring how well people with disabilities function after completing the  rehabilitation process and determining if treatments delivered are effective.

4. Respiratory Disorders: we treat patients with neuromuscular disorders and respiratory insufficiency using nasal intermittent positive pressure ventilation (NIPPV) through a nose mask to support ventilation during the day-time and/or during sleep.