As of August 2021, Prof. Christian Poellabauer has joined the faculty of the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences and the Mobile Computing Lab (M-Lab) at the University of Notre Dame is now the MOSAIC (Mobile Sensing and Analytics) Lab at FIU! Follow these pages to learn about continuing and new projects in the area of opportunistic and participatory sensing, smart health applications, sensor data analytics, mobile-based interventions, and many other topics!

The COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult for everyone, especially those in high-risk populations. Due to state-wide stay-at-home mandates, it was especially difficult for individuals with Parkinson’s Disease. Although the COVID-19 stay-at-home mandate was intended to help protect individuals at high-risk from coming into contact with the virus, it also prevented individuals with PD from receiving recommended structured and supervised exercise interventions. The presented work was completed to aid in understanding the consequences of these stay-at-home mandates. As a result of a 4-month restriction from these structured intervention programs, significant negative effects of individuals’ social well-being and across functional abilities of motor and speech function occurred. 82.14% of individuals self-reported having at least one symptom that worsened moderately or severely during the time of the stay-at-home mandates.  Tablet-based testing showed average completion times of functional tasks increased by a factor of 2.1x, while accuracy metrics showed overall degradation. As scientific and technological advances are made, in addition to the possibility of future global pandemics, a strong focus should be placed on maintaining recommended and beneficial programs for these at-risk populations.

Link: Negative Effects of COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Mandates on Physical Intervention Outcomes

The Best Paper Award was received by John Templeton, Christian Poellabauer, and Sandra Schneider for their paper entitled ‘Design Of A Mobile-Based Neurological Assessment Tool For Aging Populations’ as part of EAI MobiHealth 2020. This paper assesses the usability of a neurocognitive assessment application by individuals with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and proposes a design that focuses on the user interface, specifically on testing instructions, layouts, and subsequent user interactions.