University of Leeds

Prof. Bipin Bhakta is an NHS Consultant in Rehabilitation Medicine in Leeds and Clinical Director for Specialist Rehabilitation Services at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, the largest NHS Trust in the UK. He is also head of the Academic Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Leeds and member of the UK Stroke Research Network Clinical Research Group in Rehabilitation Research. He is principal investigator for two Department of Health New and Emerging Applications of Technology research projects and has considerable experience in managing large projects. His research activities include development and clinical evaluation of novel and existing health technologies and health outcome development in disabled adults and children.

Dr Martin Levesley is currently a senior lecturer in Dynamics and Control within the school of Mechanical Engineering and is director of the institute of Engineering Systems and Design (iESD) at the University of Leeds. His research interests encompass various biomedical mechatronic applications, such as the development of an artificial heart muscle and better methods for assessing and delivering bone cement in joint replacement therapy. He has developed close links with the life sciences through the creation of the University's interdisciplinary research centre for restorative rehabilitation where he is working on various projects related to the development of intelligent systems to deliver automated restorative physical therapy.

Projects currently underway within this research group involve device development to improve rehabilitation intervention for adults with stroke and children with cerebral palsy. Two key aspects of these research projects are: (i) they have involved users from the outset of research project design; (ii) involve multidisciplinary collaboration between institutions and faculties. This group has developed a state of the art multidisciplinary laboratory where Engineers, Clinicians and Therapists work side by side on the development and evaluation of novel rehabilitation technology.