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Based on their years of research studying how student-athletes move, ������ professors Parag Chitnis and Siddhartha Sikdar have created a start-up called Myokinetics LLC with the goal of providing personalized rehabilitation programs for injured athletes that can help them recover faster and prevent them from getting injured in the future.

This effort builds on more than $5 million in funding from the Department of Defense for developing wearable ultrasound technologies that help rehabilitate musculoskeletal injuries through a Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs grant, and two Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium awards, which is a funding mechanism that supports fast translation and development of new technologies relevant for military health.��

For the past 10 years, Chitnis and Sikdar have been developing the Myokinetics device “to understand not only when musculoskeletal injuries occur, but to help track the recovery process from the injury as well as prevent re-injury,” said Chitnis, who along with Sikdar, co-directs George Mason’s�� Center for Advancing Systems Science and Bioengineering Innovation (CASSBI), formerly the Center for Adaptive Systems of Brain-Body Interactions.����

Their device personalizes the treatments and rehabilitation that's provided so that users can recover in the most optimal manner. Chitnis and Sikdar are also working with multiple collaborators including George Mason PhD students, , and the (CEHD).����

is the director of the Patriot Performance Lab within CEHD’s . The lab conducts research and provides services that focus on athlete health and performance.��������

“The wearable ultrasound allows you to look at what the muscles are doing underneath the skin when they contract and what the contraction looks like,” said Jones, who has been working with the George Mason men’s and women’s volleyball teams since August 2024.����

“The research methods vary based on the sport, but [the volleyball players] wear the ultrasound device and we go to their practice facility once a week. Since the sport involves a lot of jumping, we have them jump on what's called a force plate, which is sort of a fancy scale, and collect data to share with the bioengineering team that way,” she said.����

In addition, Jones and the team monitor the athletes during their practices and games via the wearable microsensor, which assist in the interpretation of their findings from the weekly jumps and ultrasound tests.��

As the team’s research scientist, fourth-year PhD bioengineering student Erica King, BS Bioengineering ’21, works closely with Jones and the Patriot Performance Lab.����

“I’m using the device for specific applications and testing and validating against other gold standards that are currently in the market,” said King, who spent all four years of her undergrad on George Mason’s team.��

“I've seen my fair share of injuries as an athlete, either my own or my friends, and it’s a continuous cycle. You'll rehabilitate the injury, feel better, and then when you go back to your sport or activity, you'll get injured again,” said King, who was in the Honors College.����

“Being able to have a device to help understand what's going on at the muscle level during your rehabilitation to ensure that you're doing the exercises correctly to get the desired results and perform your sport while mitigating the risk of reinjury is so beneficial,” she said.��

Partner collaborators include North Carolina State University, Cephasonics Ultrasound, and Infinite Biomedical Technologies (IBT). IBT CEO Rahul Kaliki is also a co-founder of Myokinetics LLC.��

“At CASSBI, different people and resources are pulled in to work on multidisciplinary projects like this one. This collaboration enables a lot of iterative prototyping efforts, which would not have been possible without the center,” said Abhishek Aher, MS Bioengineering ’24.��

“I would like to see the Myokinetics device being used nationwide on the fields of major sports leagues. This should enable more metrics for the players,” said Aher, who is the Myokinetics team’s research engineer.����

“For example, metrics such as how many points a player scored or how many minutes they ran are discussed pregame or postgame, but with our device, Myokinetic metrics can become an essential conversation point. That’s where I would like to see this go in the next five years,” he said.����

King hopes to continue researching human performance after injury and focus on the most safe and effective ways that athletes can get back to their optimal performance.��

“I hope to stick with Myokinetics and implement the devices and the metrics that we're currently developing into the rehabilitation setting. This is for the general population, but athletes will always have a special place in my heart,” said King.��