Discoveries

By James Carskadon, Photos by Beth Wynn

Luke Ramsey, a senior kinesiology major from Greenville, walks while carrying a heavy load so sensors can detail the way his body responds to a changing environment. Neuromechanics Lab graduate students Sachini Kodithuwakku, a native of Sri Lanka, left, and Alana Turner of Mendenhall help collect data as lab co-director Harish Chander looks on.

When Harish Chander joined the Mississippi State Department of Kinesiology in 2014, he got the keys to a former classroom in McCarthy Gymnasium. The space was mostly empty, but full of potential for a laboratory that would generate new knowledge of neuromechanics—a science that combines neurology and biomechanics to explain human movement.

Six years later, the space is filled with state-of-the-art biomechanics equipment and students of all levels conducting research that will help reduce falls in the workplace and with the elderly, identify potential workplace safety hazards, improve athletic performance, and help children with special needs improve their movement patterns.

“The goal of all this is to try to address and prevent falls, promote safety and prevent injuries,” Chander said. “We’re trying to address a diverse real-world population. Research that we’re doing also turns into evidence-based practice for physical therapists, occupational therapists, ergonomists, occupational nurses and other health care professionals.”

When a person slips or falls, some broad details of what caused the incident are immediately known, like whether the surface was slick or a step was missed. It’s the small details of what happens before and during a fall that interest MSU Neuromechanics Laboratory researchers. To

TOP: Hannah Freeman, a kinesiology graduate student from Linden, Alabama, uses virtual reality to participate in fall prevention research at the Neuromechanics Lab. BOTTOM: Alana Turner adjusts ankle sensors on a research subject. The motion capture system is similar to what movie studios use to bring action movies like “The Avengers” to life.

have a comprehensive analysis, they use a 3D motion capture system. It’s the same concept used by Hollywood studios to bring action heroes to life in movies like “The Avengers.” While the studios animate the captured movement for cinematic feats, researchers at Mississippi State use their recorded images to study how the body responds to different environments and falls.

“We have done successful research on preventing falls in occupational settings such as construction, roofing, military and firefighting, as well as in geriatric populations,” Chander said. “Falls are the top cause of fatal and nonfatal injuries in occupational and geriatric populations. We are trying to prevent injuries from happening in the first place.”

In the lab, researchers use glycerol to create a slippery environment similar to what workers might see in a restaurant, food processing facility, automotive shop or other environments. They then have test subjects walk and move on that slick surface with and without knowledge of the environment to examine how the body responds to those conditions over time.

The MSU researchers are also using digital environments for study. The lab recently acquired virtual reality equipment, which is being used to virtually place people in settings such as roofing and construction sites. Chander said the technology could be

Local middle school student Cameron Knight walks across a surface in the Neuromechanics Lab, allowing his movement to be recorded in a motion capture system. One area of the lab’s research aims to improve motor skills in children. incorporated into training for companies.

“If you want to prevent yourself from falling, you need to get exposed to falling in a controlled environment,” Chander said. “Construction and roofing have high rates of fatal injuries, in part because workers are being recruited with no prior experience. Virtual reality can let them safely practice being in that environment.”

The lab has proven to be appealing to undergraduate students, with more of them showing interest in the work than Chander can have working in the lab. However, he helped to create a student club called Neuromechanics Research Core to keep students engaged with the lab.

Alana Turner, a doctoral student in kinesiology, worked in the lab while pursuing a bachelor’s and master’s in the field with concentrations in clinical exercise physiology and disability studies, respectively. She said that experience drove her interest in research and pursuing a career in academia while also exposing her to the real-world applications of the work.

“You can sit in class all day, but everything clicks once you’re in the lab,” Turner said. “Being able to see joint kinematics and the skeleton through the motion capture system lets you see more clearly how the body works. I’m looking forward to working with the virtual reality equipment because that has big potential for training people with autism.”

Chander practiced physical therapy in India before moving to the U.S. to attend graduate school at the University of Mississippi where he earned master’s and doctoral degrees. He said that while he enjoyed working as a physical therapist, he has a passion for research and mentoring. Several of his students have won campuswide awards for their contributions to teaching and research, and many graduates are now working in academia, professional sports or private industry.

Sachini Kodithuwakku, a doctoral student who earned a master’s degree in kinesiology from MSU, researches balance, posture, gait and falls. For her master’s degree, she primarily worked with athletes, but her doctoral work focuses on preventing falls and injuries in workplace settings. She said that while the populations may be different, the lessons and concepts learned by studying one group can often be applied to the specific needs of other populations.

“The fields are diverse, but the concepts are the same,” Kodithuwakku said. “We’re mostly looking at the same parameters and using the same instruments but with different people.”

With plans underway to construct a new building for the Department of Kinesiology near the Joe Frank Sanderson Center, the Neuromechanics Laboratory will move in the coming years to a stateof-the-art facility. However, as the lab has shown through its growth from a McCarthy classroom, a lab is much more than the physical space it inhabits.

“We have really cool research equipment, and our students are successful, finding jobs and getting recognized for their work,” Chander said. “More people are recognizing the work we do here, which will help the research be applied in real-world settings. All of that combined is what a lab should be.” n

LaShan Simpson has a heart for research and teaching.

When it comes to cardiovascular research, LaShan Simpson seeks to get to the heart of the matter.

“I love scientific mysteries like what you’d find on ‘CSI’ when something’s missing that no one else is talking about,” Simpson said. “I love my research because we’re trying to figure out something no one has before.”

Simpson, an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, is studying vascular calcification—a buildup of minerals in blood vessels, which can lead to a heart attack or stroke.

“When someone has a blockage due to vascular calcification, they receive a stent or undergo a procedure to remove the calcification, but both of these methods are temporary fixes,” Simpson said. “No one knows how to stop vascular calcification from happening in the first place.”

Simpson said better understanding of how to prevent vascular calcification begins at the cellular level.

“A phenomenon we know happens during calcification is a switch at the cellular level,” Simpson explained. “Smooth muscle cells that line the artery change into bonelike cells.”

While scientists know this phenomenon occurs, no one has figured out why and when the switch takes place. Simpson hopes a 3D model she’s designing will help decipher these unknowns. ALUMNUS.MSSTATE.EDU

Simpson’s patent-pending 3D vascular calcification model, funded by the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, lets her observe the process in a way that mimics how it happens in the body.

The model starts with pig arteries. The porcine DNA is removed while the extracellular scaffolding remains intact. Human smooth muscle cells are added to that scaffolding. At that point, Simpson introduces factors to induce calcification.

“We mimic what happens in the body,” she explained. “You’ve heard about people who have too much salt in their diet or eat too many processed foods. Those habits can lead to high levels of sodium and phosphorus in the blood, which causes vascular calcification. We add sodium phosphate to the model to mimic this process that can happen in the body.”

Once the minerals are added, everything is placed in a bioreactor, which adds dynamic flow of fluids.

“Once we add flow through the bioreactor, the artery acts similar to how it would in the body,” Simpson explained. “We can alter the rate fluid moves through the artery to act just like blood flow, so we see things like the mechanical shearing of cells. This allows us to better understand how the calcification process impacts the smooth muscle cells.”

She said the purpose of the threedimensional model is to show how arteries act differently inside the human body.

“Showing that we can induce calcification in a 3D model is important because it is more like what happens in the body. In the body, arteries are in a three-dimensional matrix, under flow all the time, in a soft material,” Simpson said. “This allows us to study healthy and diseased cells in an environment similar to the body, so we can solve the mystery of why and when smooth muscle cells make the switch to bonelike cells during calcification.”

From there, Simpson said other types of cells that also play a role in calcification can be studied and treatment options can be explored.

“We’re working on understanding the signaling process that initiates calcification in smooth muscle cells so that we can develop a treatment that reverses the switch,” Simpson said.

She said she hopes her work will one day contribute to finding a way to stop and reverse vascular calcification before significant damage can occur.

“If this is successful, we’ll be able to test different treatments on this model and since it will be similar to what happens in the body, we’ll understand which treatments might be most effective,” she said.

Students in Simpson’s lab play a big role in the research. While she asks the utmost in excellence of each of them, it’s evident she takes teaching to heart.

The Clinton, South Carolina, native is a first-generation college student who was raised by a single mother and understands the challenges many students face when navigating college.

Simpson serves as diversity coordinator for the MSU Judy and Bobby Shackouls Honors College, is on the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences diversity council and was one of two MSU faculty members awarded the 2020 Diversity Award by the Mississippi Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning. She makes it a point to seek out those students—many who are underrepresented minorities in their fields—and help them on their paths.

“My students are the reason I get out of bed in the morning,” Simpson said. “Oftentimes, the smartest students in the class are the quietest, so I pull them out and

LaShan Simpson, left, works alongside junior Christopher Robinson, right. In her effort to understand and stop vascular calcification, the associate professor is creating a 3D heart model that will pump fluid like its living counterpart to give her team a look at cellular-level changes that lead to heart damage.

get them involved and engaged.”

She emphasized the need to amplify voices that aren’t always heard in a traditional academic setting.

“I remember being a student and not knowing who to go to for answers because I didn’t have a mentor to look up to, who looked like me and would understand my experience,” she said. “Marginalized communities must have a seat at the table, to influence the culture of an institution at each level. That means more than just increasing diversity among the student population but inclusion across the board.”

Christopher Robinson joined Simpson’s lab this fall. The junior biological engineering major from Brookhaven is interested in cardiology and hopes to pursue a career addressing health inequities in that area.

“Cardiovascular health is a good way to target one of the biggest health issues in the state and nation,” said Robinson, who Simpson mentored in MSU’s honors college and as adviser for the MSU’s Biomedical Engineering Association, which Robinson serves as an executive board member.

“Her kindness and dedication to students branch outside of academics,” he said. “Dr. Simpson goes beyond to make sure students are engaged and have opportunities to feel heard.” n

Robinson, below, is one of the student researchers working in Simpson’s lab.

Researchers like LaShan Simpson are busy finding ways to stop and reverse the causes of heart disease. In the meantime, there are many lifestyle choices that can protect cardiac health.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rank heart disease as the leading cause of death for men and women, with 47% of Americans having at least one of the three key risk factors—high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking.

Taylor VanDyk, a registered dietician, says the good news is most of these risk factors are manageable.

“Lifestyle changes are the No. 1 way to maintain heart health,” explained VanDyk, who works in MSU’s Department of Health Promotion and Wellness. “Heredity and age are the only risk factors that can’t be changed. All of the others like diet, physical activity, stress management and smoking are considered modifiable. And the earlier healthy lifestyle factors are implemented, the better.”

She said small changes, like what foods we eat, can have a big impact and recommends a healthy diet that includes: • Whole grains, like whole grain bread, oatmeal and brown rice • Healthy fats from sources like olive oil, avocado and nuts • Fruits and vegetables—fresh, canned or frozen

VanDyk also suggests lifestyle changes that can affect heart health. • Drink water, unsweetened tea or coffee instead of sugar-sweetened beverages. • Eat at home more often, making it easier to control what and how much is eaten. • Limit alcohol intake to one drink or less per day. • Increase cardio exercises like walking, jogging, cycling or swimming. • Find healthy ways to cope with stress instead of smoking or drinking. • Aim for 8 hours of sleep each night.

She cautions that adults who plan to implement lifestyle changes start small by changing one habit at a time, an approach that is more likely than sudden, allencompassing changes to have lasting effects.

“It’s never too early to invest in your health,” VanDyk said. “Kids with parents who practice healthy behaviors are much more likely to practice these behaviors in adulthood. A great place to start is going for a walk or increasing fruit and vegetable intake.”

Christopher Bounds, a polymer scientist with training in business, marketing, leadership and innovation, is now director of Mississippi State’s Advanced Composites Institute, which is part of the university’s Raspet Flight Research Laboratory.

Jean-Francois Gout, an assistant professor of computational biology, is a co-principal investigator for an international team working to understand and predict coronavirus genetic mutations, which can aid in the development of potential treatments and vaccines for COVID-19. The project is funded by the National Science Foundation.

MSU political science and communication double-major Marisa D. Laudadio of Walnut, and Vasabjit Banerjee, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, collaborated on “Praetorians in the time of Pandemic: Militaries in Latin American Populist Regimes,” which was published by Columbia University’s School of International Public Affairs in its Journal of International Affairs, a leading policy-oriented journal.

A Mississippi State physics and astronomy faculty member and graduate student are among authors of a paper published in the journal “Nature” announcing their discovery of a new planet orbiting a nearby star 31.9 light-years away. The discovery positions astronomers to increase their understanding of how stars and planets form and evolve. The research team that includes associate professor Angelle Tanner and physics doctoral student Claire Geneser of Argenta, Illinois, used NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, known as TESS, and the recently retired Spitzer Space Telescope to find the Neptunesized planet named AU Mic b.

Cindy Bethel, the Billie J. Ball Endowed Professor in Engineering at Mississippi State, has been named as one of the “World’s 50 Most Renowned Women in Robotics” by Analytics Insight magazine. Bethel’s research focuses on robotics and human-robot interaction. She is the director of the Social, Therapeutic and Robotic Systems (STaRS) Lab and was a 2019 U.S. – Australian Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia.

In a groundbreaking study featured in “Nature Communications,” a natural sciences journal publishing research advances of significance, Ryan A. Folk, assistant professor of biological sciences, reveals the evolutionary history of plant diversification is completely different than decades-old theories.

Biological anthropologist Molly K. Zuckerman, an associate professor in MSU’s Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures, is using human skeletal samples to discover more about syphilis as principal investigator for a four-year $260,000 National Science Foundation-funded project. Her team is studying more than 300 skeletons from U.S. collections of 19th to early-20th century specimens diagnosed with syphilis prior to death. The researchers are examining how chronic stress, age, health conditions and immune status relate to either recovery from infection or late-stage disease development.

MSU’s RASPET

LABORATORY is now designated as the Federal Aviation Administration’s UAS Safety Research Facility, placing the research center at the helm of studying and developing safety and certification standards as UAS become increasingly integrated in the U.S. airspace.

The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Fish at Mississippi State University is awarding $5.7 million in grants to develop innovative approaches for helping solve hunger affecting more than 800 million people worldwide. As part of the U.S. Government’s Feed the Future program and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Fish Innovation Lab works to reduce poverty and improve nutrition, food security and livelihoods in developing countries by supporting research on sustainable aquaculture and fisheries systems.

MSU’s Orion supercomputer is the fourth most powerful academic data center in the U.S., according to recent rankings released by Top500.org. Orion is ranked at No. 68 on Top500’s list of the world’s most powerful computing systems. Managed by MSU’s High Performance Computing Collaboratory, Orion was installed on campus last summer with the support of $22 million in grants from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Capable of processing five thousand trillion calculations per second, Orion is powering research and development advancements in weather and climate modeling, autonomous systems, materials, cybersecurity, computational modeling and more. A health leadership team led by the Mississippi State University EXTENSION SERVICE has received a national award for its work to address mental health challenges in the state’s agricultural community. Directors of the PROMISE Initiative will receive the Southern Distinguished Team award from Epsilon Sigma. PROMISE stands for “PReventing Opioid Misuse in the SouthEast” and is led by MSU Extension state health specialist David Buys. The team earned Mental Health First Aid certification before teaching the curriculum to more than 600 people. More than $1 million in awarded competitive grant funding supports the education campaign.

The Mississippi State-led

AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS, also known as the Alliance for System Safety of UAS, or ASSURE, has gained more than $10 million in grants from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The NATIONAL RESEARCH

LOW VISION at Mississippi State has received a fiveyear, $4.375 million grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research. The Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Employment of People who are Blind or Have Low Vision grant will fund seven major research projects strengthening the NRTC’s reputation as the nation’s only federally funded center focused on employment outcomes for people with blindness or low vision.