Ferdinando (Sandro) Mussa-Ivaldi is an Italian born professor at

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

. He is known for his contributions to the fields of

motor control Motor control is the regulation of movement in organisms that possess a nervous system. Motor control includes reflexes as well as directed movement. To control movement, the nervous system must integrate multimodal sensory information (both f ...

, motor learning and computational neuroscience.

Biography

Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi obtained a degree ( Laurea) in

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

from the University of Torino (1978) and a PhD in biomedical engineering from the Politecnico di Milano (1987). He was a postdoctoral fellow and principal research scientist in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the MIT. He is now Professor of Physiology, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Biomedical Engineering at

. He is the founder and director of the Robotics Laboratory in the

Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago The Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, formerly the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC), is a not-for-profit nationally ranked physical medicine and rehabilitation research hospital based in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1954, the AbilityLab is design ...

Scientific contributions

Mussa-Ivaldi’s research combines experimental methods with the application of computational principles. His experimental work has been influential for the study of arm biomechanics and, in particular, motor learning in human subjects. He has also studied motor primitives in the frog's

spinal cord The spinal cord is a long, thin, tubular structure made up of nervous tissue, which extends from the medulla oblongata in the brainstem to the lumbar region of the vertebral column (backbone). The backbone encloses the central canal of the spi ...

that are a central issue in many theories of motor control. Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi's theoretical work has focused on the analysis of redundant

kinematics Kinematics is a subfield of physics, developed in classical mechanics, that describes the Motion (physics), motion of points, Physical object, bodies (objects), and systems of bodies (groups of objects) without considering the forces that cause ...

in human subjects. He has asked how a variety of movement patterns and control strategies can be constructed from the superposition of a set of basis

fields Fields may refer to: Music *Fields (band), an indie rock band formed in 2006 *Fields (progressive rock band), a progressive rock band formed in 1971 * ''Fields'' (album), an LP by Swedish-based indie rock band Junip (2010) * "Fields", a song by ...

. Of particular theoretical importance is his discovery of how pseudoinverses of Jacobians can be computed so that integrability is always a given. In some more recent work, Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi has applied computational ideas to the design of brain machine interfaces. He and his collaborators have developed the first neurorobotic system in which a neural preparation in-vitro - the brainstem of a Lamprey - controls the behavior of a mobile-robot through a closed-loop interaction. Recent research in the lab of Dr. Mussa-Ivaldi addresses clinical questions where computational insights can be used to better the lives of persons with disabilities.

External links

The robotics lab at the rehabilitation institute of Chicago
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mussa-Ivaldi, Sandro Italian emigrants to the United States Northwestern University faculty Living people Year of birth missing (living people)