Expertise

Topics:  Musculoskeletal Biomechanics, Wearable Sensing, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Medical Imaging

Eni Halilaj directs the CMU Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Lab, an interdisciplinary group of engineers seeking to understand and optimize human movement mechanics. Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon in 2018, she was a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University and completed her graduate and undergraduate studies at Brown University. She is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, American Society of Biomechanics Early Career Achievement Award, NIH K12 Career Development Scholarship, George Tallman Ladd Research Award, and College of Engineering Dean’s Early Career Faculty Fellowship.

Media Experience

Understanding the biomechanics, neuroscience of athletes in the FIFA World Cup  — TribLive
Eni Halilaj is an engineering professor at CMU who specializes in biomechanics of movement. She works on wearable sensors to study how athletes move. [...] “They’re asking more of their bodies,” Halilaj said. “In elite athletes, injuries happen even in peak conditions because they’re operating near the limits of human performance.” Less common, but more detrimental, are tears to the ACL, a knee ligament. “It can be career-ending for some people,” she said. “What we’re trying to do in research is better understand and tailor recovery so athletes can return to sport as safely as possible.”

Tesla’s Optimus and the big questions in the quest to make a humanoid robo  — CNBC
“Our body is a complex engineering system that we still do not fully understand,” Halilaj said. “We have a long way to go to reverse engineer it, making motion planning and control challenging for humanoid robotics. For example, we still do not understand how our central nervous system selects specific muscle coordination patterns to carry out daily tasks — this is one of the grand challenges in biomechanics and neural control.”

Precision rehabilitation may prevent osteoarthritis  — MedicalXpress
Using flexible wearable sensors that look like Band-Aids, we monitor movement outside of the lab, where patients are not on their best behavior and may be adopting pain avoidance walking strategies that damage their joints in the long run," said Halilaj. [....] "In a not-too-distant future, we envision clinicians using data from these minimal wearables sensors and smartphone videos to isolate the 60 percent of patients who are likely to suffer from debilitating osteoarthritis, personalize their therapy accordingly, and even prescribe a wearable haptic device that helps them correct their gait before it is too late," concluded Halilaj.