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Jake Bowd

Research Associate;

Overview

I am currently in the final stages of a PhD in Medical Engineering under the supervision of Professor Cathy Holt and Dr Gemma Whatling at Cardiff University. The PhD is titled ‘Does gait retraining have the potential to slow osteoarthritis development and prolong the benefits of knee realignment surgery (High Tibial Osteotomy (HTO))?’.

I achieved my first Co-Investigator award on an EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account titled ‘Gait Retraining for patients undergoing High Tibial Osteotomy’. This work aimed to build an in-house pipeline to provide participants with real-time feedback on lower limb biomechanics during activities of daily living.

My second Research Associate position is focused on better understanding mechanical loading of knee osteoarthritis (OA) and the relationship to pain-related functional impairment as part of the wider project of OATech+ Network (OATech+ Network). The end of the project will align with end of OATech+ Network output reporting and contributing to the Network legacy to facilitate high-level grant funding/publications in OA technology development.

Publications

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

Teaching

I support teaching for Undergraduate Medical Engineering students with project supervision, lab tutorial support, rehabiliation/wearable technology training, research methods and statistics training, report feedback and assessments. 

During the years of completing my PhD, I retained continued involvement in teaching Undergraduate students in the School of Engineering at Cardiff University.

  • Lectured Medical Engineering undergraduates at Cardiff University (2018-2020).
  • Lectured second year Medical Engineering students: ‘Wrist, Hand & Finger Biomechanics’ and ‘An Introduction to Motion Analysis’.
  • Lectured final year Medical Engineering students: ‘Kinematic Geometry of Human Motion: Describing Body Position and Displacement’, ‘Joint Modelling’, MATLAB tutorials and teaching coursework.
  • Supervised 7 final year Medical Engineering dissertations (2017-2021).
  • Supervised a Medical Engineering Masters’ Ergonomics project assessing the relationship between military issued combat boots and lower-limb injuries related to high impact. 

My initial research interest in sports biomechanics as a student led to projects assessing gender differences that cause ACL injuries.

My PhD research retained similar biomechanical techniques but moved into a rehabilitation and clinical biomechanics focus. The PhD aimed to quantify external knee adduction moments as well as using musculoskeletal models to determine load distribution in the tibia subchondral bone when undertaking gait retraining pre- and post-HTO. Gait retraining was quantified biomechanically to generate recommendations for gait modifications to benefit patients with knee osteoarthritis pre-to-post-HTO. Gait and full body joint biomechanics were quantified for healthy volunteers and patients pre-and post-HTO, to reveal biomechanical differences. This PhD reports the biomechanical merits of altering gait and contribute to rehabilitation protocols leading to clinical trials.

Whilst finishing my PhD, I was successful in obtaining my first Co-I funding. I achieved my first Co-Investigator award on an EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account titled ‘Gait Retraining for patients undergoing High Tibial Osteotomy’. This work aimed to build an in-house pipeline to provide participants with real-time feedback on lower limb biomechanics during activities of daily living.

My second Research Associate position is focused on better understanding mechanical loading of knee osteoarthritis (OA) and the relationship to pain-related functional impairment as part of the wider project of OATech+ Network (OATech+ Network). The end of the project will align with end of OATech+ Network output reporting and contributing to the Network legacy to facilitate high-level grant funding/publications in OA technology development.

Grant Awards/Current Research Collaborations

  • Named Researcher: OATech+ Network - Project Title : OA Nociceptive Measures, > £40,000.
  • Named CO-Investigator: IAA EPSRC grant, £20,000.
  • Early Career Researcher placement funding from OATech+ Network 2019 of £3,000.
  • Student summer placement from CUROP, 3 x £3,000.
  • Awarded a CITER Conference Travel Bursary of £1,000 to deliver a talk at ICORS.

Supervision

Past projects

Areas of expertise