Faculty and Staff

Cristine Agresta is an assistant professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine. She is a movement scientist, clinician, and sports medicine researcher working to improve physical resilience, performance, and longevity in recreational and elite athletes. Her research focuses on how to enhance decision-making about athlete readiness, equipment design, training, rehabilitation, and return-to-play through better assessment and monitoring methods. She has an MPT from Youngstown State University, a PhD in Movement Science from Temple University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Kinesiology at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Aubin’s research spans robotics and biomechanics with  applications in health and mobility. He motivates his research by engaging with patients and stakeholders to understand shortcomings in the areas of rehabilitation, prosthetics, orthotics, and physical therapy. Dr. Aubin strives to address these unmet patient and caregiver needs by establishing multidisciplinary research teams that leverage state of the art technologies in robotics, neuroscience, and computational intelligence. Dr. Aubin’s research goal is to develop and utilizes novel sensors, algorithms, assistive powered devices, and robotic tools that can augment human performance and/or improve mobility and function for those affected by disease, age or trauma.

Sam Burden earned his BS with Honors in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington in Seattle in 2008. He earned his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California in Berkeley in 2014, where he subsequently spent one year as a Postdoctoral Scholar. In 2015, he returned to UW EE (now ECE) as an Assistant Professor, where he received awards for research (Young Investigator Program, Army Research Office, 2016; CAREER, National Science Foundation, M3X program, 2021) and service (Junior Faculty Award, UW College of Engineering, 2021). Sam served as his Department’s (first) Associate Chair for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in 2021–2022 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2022. He is broadly interested in discovering and formalizing principles of sensorimotor control. Specifically, he focuses on applications in robotics, neuroengineering, and (human-)cyber-physical systems. Sam lives with chronic illness, and is happy to meet with anyone who identifies as disabled or chronically ill.

Heather Feldner, PT, PhD, PCS Emeritus, is an assistant professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, core faculty in the Disability Studies Program, and an associate director of the Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences (CREATE) at the University of Washington.
Dr. Feldner’s research is centered at the intersection of mobility, disability, and technology in two primary areas, including perceptions of disability and identity and how these emerge and evolve through technology use, and in the design and implementation of pediatric mobility technology, considering how attitudes and the built environment affect equity and participation. She also focuses on how disability can be further integrated into intersectional Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion initiatives, particularly in health professions education. Her current work incorporates multidisciplinary, mixed methods, and participatory approaches drawing from her background as a pediatric physical therapist, doctoral work in disability studies, and postdoctoral research in in mechanical engineering.

Fatma Inanici is a physician and postdoctoral research fellow at the Restorative Technologies Lab at the University of Washington. She received her medical degree and completed her Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation residency at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey. She worked as a clinician and a faculty member in the same institution before moving to United States of America. Dr. Inanici completed her Ph.D. in Rehabilitation Science, under the supervision of Dr. Chet Moritz at the University of Washington. Currently, her research focuses on electrical spinal cord stimulation to restore function after spinal cord injury.

Kim Ingraham (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UW. She is affiliated with UW CREATE (Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences) and is a core faculty member of the AMP Lab. She directs the (yet-to-be-named) Ingraham Lab, which is focused on advancing human mobility using assistive robotic devices, such as exoskeletons, prostheses, and powered wheelchairs.
Dr. Ingraham has an interdisciplinary training background, and has earned degrees in Biomedical Engineering (BE 2012, Vanderbilt University) and Mechanical Engineering (MS, PhD 2021, University of Michigan). She was a CREATE postdoctoral fellow in Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Washington. Prior to beginning graduate school, she worked as a Research Engineer at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab (formerly the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago).
In her past professional and doctoral research, Dr. Ingraham has developed and evaluated physiologically-inspired control systems for a variety of assistive devices, including powered lower-limb prostheses, robotic exoskeletons, and powered wheelchairs for young children with disabilities.

Valerie Kelly is a physical therapist and an associate professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine. In her research, Dr. Kelly works with people who have Parkinson disease to understand factors that impact mobility and to develop innovative treatments to improve mobility. Dr. Kelly has an MS degree in Physical Therapy and a PhD in Movement Science from Washington University in St. Louis, and she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in rehabilitation medicine at the University of Washington.

My principal research interest is the study of locomotor energetics from the perspective of mechanical engineering. To do this, I utilize many tools, including finite element modeling, musculoskeletal modeling, motion capture, Matlab, and kinematic/kinetic analysis. My lab (Primate Evolutionary Biomechanics Lab) is equipped with analysis computers, a scanner, and a 3D printer; primate skeletons and radiographs are available. I use the motion capture capabilities of the Amplifying Movement and Performance (AMP) Laboratory and I collaborate with researchers in the Departments of Orthopaedics and Sport Medicine, Rehabilitation Medicine, and Mechanical and Civil Engineering. My research is, however, firmly grounded in modern evolutionary theory.

Eric Rombokas is interested in how brains control movement and sense their environment, and how these principles can be used to control robots and interface with next-generation prosthetic limbs. Today's robots operate in carefully controlled environments, and are specialists for specific tasks. Robots that operate in unstructured environments, interact with people, or perform manipulation of arbitrary objects, however, remain open topics of research. Prosthetic limbs exemplify the most challenging problem domain: they are expected to perform in close collaboration with the human user under unforgiving weight and power requirements in completely unstructured environments.

Sean Rundell is a physical therapist, epidemiologist, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine. Dr. Rundell conducts epidemiologic and health services research of musculoskeletal conditions, with a focus on low back pain and chronic musculoskeletal pain conditions in older adults. His teaching responsibilities are in the musculoskeletal track of the Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program, and he is also the Curriculum Coordinator for the University of Washington Orthopedic Physical Therapy Residency program.

Soshi Samejima, DPT, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine. Soshi has been a physical therapist since 2005 with experience in acute and outpatient settings and completed his PhD degree at UW in 2020. His primary research interests encompass a broad range of topics within the field of rehabilitation and neuromodulation for autonomic function following spinal cord injury. These include 1) exploring specific biological mechanisms, 2) implementing therapeutic neuromodulation interventions, and 3) evaluating the impact of rehabilitation and spinal cord stimulation on the cardiovascular and pelvic organ function.

Sarah (Sally) Westcott McCoy, PT, PhD, FAPTA is a Professor Emerita in the Division of Physical Therapy, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine. She previously taught within DPT and PhD courses related to pediatrics, measurement, postural and motor control, global rehabilitation and administration. As a clinician, she was involved in pediatric physical therapy working clinically in various settings (early intervention, schools, private practices) and locations within the USA. Her research interests are understanding child, family, and service factors affecting outcomes in children with cerebral palsy, and assessment and intervention for children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders and developmental coordination disorders. She has served on the editorial boards of the Physical Therapy Journal, Pediatric Physical Therapy, and Physical and Occupational Therapy in Pediatrics.