Back to Pre-Meeting Webinars

Presented by: Alex Schepelmann, ZIN Technologies, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio and NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio

Title: Bone Mineral Density Maintenance During Long-Duration Spaceflight

• Biosketch: Dr. Alexander Schepelmann is a Robotics and Computational Modeling Engineer at ZIN Technologies, Inc. with over ten years of experience in designing and controlling robotic systems.  He holds Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University, as well as a Master of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University.  At Case Western Reserve University, Dr. Schepelmann's work revolved around the development of computationally efficient, real-time probabilistic computer vision and control algorithms for autonomous lawnmowing applications, which allowed autonomous vehicles to dynamically react to and rapidly re-plan around obstacles.  At Carnegie Mellon University, his work focused on the design and control of legged locomotion testbeds to evaluate decentralized swing-leg controllers, and the optimization-based design and control of compact nonlinear springs for series elastic actuators.  Dr. Schepelmann also completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University/HEBI Robotics, where he worked as a controls and state-estimation subject matter expert to help in the commercialization of modular robot actuator technologies.  In his current role at ZIN, he supports NASA's Human Research Program to develop computational models of bone health and the cognitive impact of radiation and other stressors during long-duration spaceflight.  He also supports the design and control of the "Advanced Twin Lifting and Aerobic System (ATLAS)," a human-in-the-loop robotic exercise device under development for use during long-duration space missions.
• Presentation: 
  2019-10-07_ml-msmwebinar_aschepelmann.pdf2.11 MB
  click here to link to website.
• Abstract: Prolonged microgravity exposure disrupts natural bone remodeling processes and can lead to a significant loss of bone strength, increasing injury risk during missions and placing astronauts at a greater risk of bone fracture later in life.  Resistance-based exercise during missions can combat bone loss, but the amount of required exercise to maintain bone mineral density (BMD) for individuals is unclear.  We present work to develop a personalizable, site-specific computational modeling toolchain of bone remodeling dynamics to understand and estimate changes in volumetric BMD in response to microgravity-induced bone unloading and in-flight exercise.  The toolchain is evaluated against data collected from subjects in a 70-day bed rest study, and is found to provide insight into the amount of exercise stimulus needed to minimize bone loss, quantitatively predicting post-study volumetric BMD of control subjects who did not perform exercise, and qualitatively predicting the effects of exercise.  Results suggest that, with additional data, the toolchain could be further developed to aid in the creation of customized in-flight exercise regimens and to predict exercise effectiveness.

This Webinar is posted on the MSM YouTube Channel

This is part of a series of recordings for the ML-MSM Meeting, see complete list of Pre-Meeting Webinars/content/pre-meeting-webinars-2019-ml-msm