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The University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Center of Research in Human Movement Variability (MOVCENTR) received a $6 million grant last week from the National Institutes of Health. The funding allows UNO to continue its innovative research into biomechanics and biomedicine.
In MOVCENTR’s decade-long lifespan, the program has received more than $26 million in grants from the NIH’s Centers of Biomechanical Research Excellence (COBRE).
Dr. Nickolaos Stergiou, director of UNO’s Department of Biomechanics and Research Development and MOVCENTR, said those grants helped put UNO on the map.
“My university developed the confidence to think and dream that we can get things like that to establish research centers, to establish research facilities, to establish biomedical excellence, in terms of research,” Stergiou said. “And we started to be major players, not only in the state, but around the world.”
MOVCENTR’s work focuses on movement variability in the human body. Stergiou said each step a person takes is slightly different, but the small variations between movements are patterned and measurable. When someone develops a movement disorder — like Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis — the predictability of those movements is thrown off, making everyday tasks difficult.
“They could lead to changes in terms of the way you move, and we try to restore the healthy way that you move,” Stergiou said.
Stergiou said there are many therapies MOVCENTR has developed and used to promote healthy movement, like audio/visual metronomes.
“Or it could be, for example, different devices like an exoskeleton or an exosuit or even a 3D-printed prosthetic,” Stergiou said. “There is a variety of different ways to achieve this goal.”
Stergiou said MOVCENTR has three core facilities: movement analysis, quantitative analysis research, and machining and prototyping.
“These three cores practically provide services to scientists, not only from UNO, not only from Nebraska, but it could be from all over the world, with respect to movement analysis or building different things for them or analyzing different data,” Stergiou said.
Stergiou said researchers who use the facilities come from UNO, nearby Creighton University and as far as Europe and Mexico.
“What we have here in Nebraska, it is absolutely amazing,” Stergiou said. “There is absolutely no other place like what we have in the rest of the world. People from Nebraska— they should be extremely proud of their program in biomechanics.”
Stergiou said the facilities have given Nebraska’s biomechanics community a chance to provide unique services to people with movement disorders.
“We are in the job of helping people, and that is what makes me sleep well at night,” Stergiou said. “We do very good things for many, many different people.”
MOVCENTR is also able to give Children’s Nebraska physicians more data that can be used to treat patients with movement disorders like cerebral palsy.
“We analyze their gait, and we provide information about their gait to their orthopedic surgeons in terms of their upcoming surgeries and their future rehabilitation,” Stergiou said.
Scientists, researchers and medical investigators from outside UNO can use MOVCENTR facilities for a fee. The latest grant will allow MOVCENTR to focus on making its current operations and services sustainable.
“When the funding ends in five years, we will not need funding anymore from the NIH,” Stergiou said. “We can just take care of ourselves. We'll have sufficient clientele in terms of our cores so they can autonomously function for the rest of their lives.”
MOVCENTR and UNO’s Department of Biomechanics and Research Development are also supported by faculty-secured research funding and private donations.