Niels Waterval, PhD
Researcher focussing on orthotic devices and understanding pathological gait
Projects
Fellowship Precision Orthotics
Bridging the gap between clinical practice, research and education
Personal grant with the aim to implement research into education and orthotic care. Aim is to create knowledge base and generate new research into the area of (cost-)effectiveness of ankle foot orthosis.
Interview about this fellowship in Dutch: click here.
Grant: 200.000 Euro. ZonMW.
Publications: click here
Learning to walk with an AFO
Project aiming to understand how people adapt to an ankle foot orthosis. Using the small grant a retrospective analysis on the PROOF-AFO trial and proof-of-concept study will be performed.
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Grant: 10.000 Euro. Amsterdam Movement Sciences
Post-doc researcher: Elza van Duijnhoven
PROOF-AFO
Understanding the effect of AFO stiffness
My PhD project. Goal of the project was to experimentally assess the effect of optimizing AFO stiffness in people with calf muscle weakness. Results showed that individually optimized AFOs improve treatment outcomes compared to usual care.
Publications: click here
ADJUST-AFO
Development of a variable stiffness AFO
Project with the goal to develop a stiffness-adjustable ankle foot orthosis to use within the clinic to optimize AFO properties. Currently the ADJUST-AFO is in development. We hope to conduct the first tests in spring 2023.
Grant
PhD student: Yvette Keij
Predictive simulations to understand pathological gait and working mechanisms of AFOs
The goal of this project was to predict the individual AFO stiffness maximally reducing the energy cost of walking using forward simulations in order to bring Precision Orthotics to the clinic.
Grant:
Publications: click here
Gait in rotationplasty
Project in collaboration with the Orthopaedics department. Goal of the project is to measure gait quality long-term after rotationplasty surgery.
PhD student: Gitte Krebbekx
Publications: click here