Talk Explores Balance, Mobility, Aging

Adam Goodworth, a professor in the departments of engineering and kinesiology, and alumnus Maury Hayashida (’95) examine balance and mobility and how aging affects them in a talk Thursday, March 21, at 5:30 pm at the Community Arts Workshop, 631 Garden Street, in downtown Santa Barbara. The Westmont Downtown Lecture, “Aging and Mobility: Fundamentals and Frontiers,” is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required. Free parking is available on the streets surrounding CAW or in nearby city parking lots. For more information, please call (805) 565-6051.

“We’ll have a few activities for the audience, plenty of practical tips, key research data, and a discussion about future directions and the latest technology,” Goodworth says.

Hayashida established Hayashida and Associates Physical Therapy in 2002, an orthopedic and sports rehabilitation center. In addition, he founded Variant Training Lab and its parent company, the ArthroKinetic Institute, a state-of-the-art facility designed to identify, prevent and correct disorders of the human musculoskeletal system. A medical training facility, Variant analyzes the movement of healthy, high-performing individuals who want to remain that way. “We utilize our Test, Treat, Train philosophy to predict risk and optimize movement,” says Hayashida, who has also served as the executive director of the Research Institute of Human Movement since 2011.

Goodworth, who earned a doctorate from Oregon Health and Sciences University, is a biomedical engineer who applies technical approaches to human movement science. He has conducted research on prosthetics, including efforts to assist the nonprofit LIMB International on projects in Africa. He was lead author of “Characteristics of inter-subject variability in feedback control of standing balance” published in the Journal of Neurophysiology. He won a grant from the Department of Defense to study how microprocessor knees affect perturbed walking and standing balance, and also has funding from the National Science Foundation to study mechanisms of balance in children with severe cerebral palsy.