Talk Explores Balance, Mobility, Aging

Adam Goodworth, a professor in the departments of engineering and kinesiology, and alumnus Maury Hayashida ’95 examine balance and mobility and how they’re affected by aging in a talk Thursday, March 21, at 5:30 p.m. at the Community Arts Workshop, 631 Garden Street, in downtown Santa Barbara. The Westmont Downtown Lecture, “Aging and Mobility: Fundamentals and Frontiers,” is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required. Free parking is available on the streets surrounding CAW or in nearby city parking lots. For more information, please call (805) 565-6051.

“We’ll have a few activities for the audience, plenty of practical tips, key research data, and a discussion about future directions and the latest technology,” Goodworth says.

Hayashida founded Hayashida and Associates Physical Therapy in 2002, an orthopedic and sports rehabilitation center, he also founded Variant Training Lab and its parent company the ArthroKinetic Institute, a state-of-the-art facility designed to identify, prevent, and correct human musculoskeletal system disorders.  Variant is a medical training facility emphasizing movement analysis of healthy, high-performing individuals who want to remain that way. “We utilize our Test, Treat, Train philosophy to predict risk and optimize movement,” says Hayashida who has also been the executive director of the Research Institute of Human Movement since 2011.

Goodworth, who earned a doctorate from Oregon Health and Sciences University, is a biomedical engineer who applies technical approaches to human movement science. He has conducted research on prosthetics, including efforts to assist the nonprofit LIMB International on projects in Africa. He was lead author of “Characteristics of inter-subject variability in feedback control of standing balance” published in the Journal of Neurophysiology. He won a grant from the Department of Defense to study how microprocessor knees impact perturbed walking and standing balance, and is also funded by the National Science Foundation to study mechanisms of balance in children with severe cerebral palsy.

The Westmont Foundation sponsors Westmont Downtown: Conversations about Things that Matter as well as the annual Westmont President’s Breakfast, which features Richard Haass, a veteran diplomat, on March 1 at Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort.