Ohio State News

Buckeye engineers team up with US Soccer to advance recovery science

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 13:30:00 -0400

The Ohio State University is partnering with the U.S. Soccer Federation to push the frontiers of recovery science — the quickly evolving discipline focused on restoring athletes’ readiness between training, competition and injury. Through the university’s Human Performance Collaborative (HPC), the partnership is translating laboratory science into practical tools and protocols for soccer athletes, with studies underway.

“This is one of my favorite projects,” said Joshua Hagen, faculty director of the HPC and an associate research professor in the Department of Integrated Systems Engineering. “I have a passion for recovery science, and I love working directly with athletes and end users. When you pair controlled studies and real-world context — actually talking with athletes about what works — you get the most meaningful impact.”

At Ohio State, especially within football and soccer, recovery science combines measurement and modalities. Scientists measure workload via heart-rate monitors, GPS and session rating of perceived exertion, alongside physiological markers such as heart rate variability.

“Once we understand how hard their bodies are working and responding, we need to recover them quickly to get ready for the next day,” explained Hagen. “We call these recovery modalities — everything from cold and hot therapy, to sleep and nutrition, to newer tech like red light and flotation therapy.”

The relationship between Ohio State and U.S. Soccer traces back to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. At the time, a colleague of Hagen’s who was then head of high performance for the U.S. Men’s National Team approached Ohio State with a bold idea: Design and install a premier recovery facility inside the team hotel. That early collaboration set the stage for a formal partnership.

One of the partnership’s flagship studies examines vibroacoustic therapy, operated within Ohio State’s Shoemaker Complex, a state-of-the-art student athlete hub. Hagen describes the technology as “sensory-enhanced meditation and mindfulness” in which athletes recline in a cocoon-like device with intentionally crafted instrumental music and subwoofer-driven vibrations. Those vibrations mimic structured breathing patterns, like box breathing or 4-7-8 breathing, which are known to nudge the body toward a parasympathetic, recovered state.

“It’s very spiritual and relaxing,” Hagen said. “Athletes might not realize that’s what’s happening — but they feel good, and physiologically their bodies are being pushed into a recovery state. It’s a holistic approach that’s both enjoyable and potentially very effective.”

The collaboration also supports emerging scholars. U.S. Soccer and the university jointly funded Emaly Vatne, a former Ohio State soccer player turned researcher, through her PhD in exercise science and kinesiology. She defended her dissertation this spring and has begun working with Denver Summit FC, a team in the National Women’s Soccer League, while completing her research.

“Elements of this collaboration have informed the design of our Recovery Lab and our broader effort to upgrade how we approach recovery across U.S. Soccer,” said José María Oliva Lozano, the federation’s director of performance innovation. “We see this as an important first step. There is still much to learn about the effects and periodization of different recovery modalities across ages, sexes and competitive contexts.”

Ohio State researchers are approximately two years into the formal scientific program, according to Hagen. The team did a comprehensive literature review, found gaps and then launched targeted studies, including the vibroacoustic chamber study, which is about a year underway. He expects four or five mini studies to wrap up by the end of spring semester, with multiple papers coming out of the work.

Hagen’s academic home is in the College of Engineering, but his role as HPC faculty director brings together engineers, exercise physiologists, medical doctors and physical therapists — reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of modern sports science.

“You have to know exercise physiology, but you also have to know tech, data and math,” he explained. “Our team includes people who’ve lived the sport and can code the tools. That combination — domain knowledge plus technical depth — really matters when you’re building solutions athletes will use.”

The team expects findings to inform recovery access and protocols for athletes heading into major competitions. The collaboration with U.S. Soccer will continue through upcoming cycles of international competition, with an eye to scale, coach education and equitable access to low-cost tools.

“At the end of the day, we’re trying to help athletes perform better, reduce injury risk, sleep better and enjoy longer careers,” Hagen said. “And we want to do it the right way, with controlled studies, transparent reporting and direct conversations with the people we serve.”

Machine learning helps scientists peer (a second) into the future

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 09:07:57 -0400

The past may be a fixed and immutable point, but with the help of machine learning, the future can at times be more easily divined.

Using a new type of machine learning method called next generation reservoir computing, researchers at The Ohio State University have recently found a new way to predict the behavior of spatiotemporal chaotic systems – such as changes in Earth’s weather – that are particularly complex for scientists to forecast.

The study, published today in the journal Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, utilizes a new and highly efficient algorithm that, when combined with next generation reservoir computing, can learn spatiotemporal chaotic systems in a fraction of the time of other machine learning algorithms.

Researchers tested their algorithm on a complex problem that has been studied many times in the past – forecasting the behavior of an atmospheric weather model. In comparison to traditional machine learning algorithms that can solve the same tasks, the Ohio State team’s algorithm is more accurate, and uses 400 to 1,250 times less training data to make better predictions than its counterpart. Their method is also less computationally expensive; while solving complex computing problems previously required a supercomputer, they used a laptop running Windows 10 to make predictions in about a fraction of a second – about 240,000 times faster than traditional machine learning algorithms.

“This is very exciting, as we believe it’s a substantial advance in terms of data processing efficiency and prediction accuracy in the field of machine learning,” said Wendson De Sa Barbosa, lead author and a postdoctoral researcher in physics at Ohio State. He said that learning to predict these extremely chaotic systems is a “physics grand challenge,” and understanding them could pave the way to new scientific discoveries and breakthroughs.

“Modern machine learning algorithms are especially well-suited for predicting dynamical systems by learning their underlying physical rules using historical data,” said De Sa Barbosa. “Once you have enough data and computational power, you can make predictions with machine learning models about any real-world complex system.” Such systems can include any physical process, from the bob of a clock’s pendulum to disruptions in power grids.

Even heart cells display chaotic spatial patterns when they oscillate at an abnormally higher frequency than a normal heartbeat, said De Sa Barbosa. That means this research could one day be used to provide better insight to controlling and interpreting heart disease, as well as a bevy of other “real-world” problems.

“If one knows the equations that accurately describe how these unique processes for a system will evolve, then its behavior could be reproduced and predicted,” he said. Simple movements, like the swing position of a clock, can be predicted easily using only its current position and velocity. Yet more complex systems, like Earth’s weather, are far more difficult to foresee due to how many variables actively dictate its chaotic behavior.

To make precise predictions of the entire system, scientists would have to have accurate information about every single one of these variables, and the model equations that describe how these many variables are related, which is altogether impossible, said De Sa Barbosa. But with their machine learning algorithm, the almost 500,000 historical training data points used in previous works for the atmospheric weather example used in this study could be reduced to only 400, while still achieving the same or better accuracy.

Going forward, De Sa Barbosa aims to further his research by using their algorithm to possibly speed up spatiotemporal simulations, he said.

“We live in a world that we still know so little about, so it’s important to recognize these high-dynamical systems and learn how to more efficiently predict them.”

The co-author of the study was Daniel J. Gauthier, a professor of physics at Ohio State. Their work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Autonomous vehicle research track up and running

Thu, 11 Jul 2019 16:32:00 -0400

A new $45 million research park dedicated to developing the newest generation of automated and connected vehicles is open for business.

The Transportation Research Center’s new Smart Mobility Advance Research Test Center, or SMARTCenter, opened Wednesday with a demonstration for state and local leaders. The state-of-the-art facility is two-thirds the size of Central Park.

The SMARTCenter is a partnership between the state, the economic development nonprofit JobsOhio and The Ohio State University. Ohio State’s Senior Vice President for Research Morley Stone said the test facility enables the university to sustain its status as a world leader in autonomous vehicle research.

“From a research area standpoint, there are no areas out there that are more exciting than what’s happening in autonomous vehicles writ large,” Stone said. “To actually have the world’s premier test track in our backyard is an enormous asset for our research enterprise.”

David Williams, dean of the College of Engineering and a member of TRC’s board of directors, agreed.

“If you want to be at the forefront of smart mobility, we are the place to do it. The scale that we have here is unprecedented compared to every other university in the country,” he said.

Lt. Gov. Jon Husted led the ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the center. He said the project keeps Ohio at the forefront of important research and will attract business to the state.

“Why in the world, if I was in this space, wouldn’t I want to be in central Ohio? This is where every company in the world should want to have a presence because there’s going to be some amazing innovations going on here that will affect the lives of everybody in the world,” he said.

The center features the longest and widest data-connected intersection in the industry. Operations are managed in a 10,000-square-foot control building with garages and research space.

When the project is finished, it will feature an urban network area allowing researchers to test vehicles in a variety of moveable intersections, roundabouts and road configurations.

“It benefits the university in several ways. First of all, for this to succeed, there need to be two things: fundamental research and then applied research with a workforce that can actually translate the research into reality,” Williams said. “At Ohio State, we bring both of those aspects to TRC. We are the research in the Transportation Research Center.”

The SMARTCenter is not just a boon to researchers; it will also support students preparing for the jobs of the future.

“Imagine the experience that our students are going to have using this as a research test bed,” Stone said. “The ability to walk into a state-of-the-art facility, that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, and be able to test in real-world environments – that’s truly remarkable.”

Defending champion Ohio State revved up for next EcoCAR competition

Sat, 27 Oct 2018 08:00:00 -0400

A team of students from The Ohio State University has been selected to participate in the upcoming Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition, EcoCAR Mobility Challenge.

The four-year collegiate automotive competition aims to develop a highly-skilled workforce by providing hands-on experience designing and building next-generation mobility solutions to meet future energy and mobility challenges.

Teams will be challenged to re-engineer a 2019 Chevrolet Blazer. Incorporating advanced propulsion systems, electrification and connected and automated vehicle technology, they will work to improve the energy efficiency, safety and consumer appeal of the Blazer, with the carsharing market in mind.

“The team is ecstatic to compete in the next generation of EcoCAR challenges,” said Simon Trask, co-engineering manager for the Ohio State EcoCAR team. “With connected and automated vehicle technologies in the competition scope, our team can develop our design alongside the recent industry developments. Not only are we in exciting new territory for AVTCs, but we also have the opportunity to invest in students who will one day become leaders in this rapidly growing industry.”

EcoCAR Mobility Challenge is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, General Motors and MathWorks, and managed by Argonne National Laboratory.

“Over 25,000 students across 93 institutions have participated in the DOE’s advanced vehicle technology competitions,” said Connie Bezanson, energy technology program specialist for the U.S. Department of Energy. “These leaders and the people coming out of these programs are really helping to be the innovators and the leaders in sustainable transportation for our future.”

The Ohio State University has been a participant in AVTCs since 1990 and has placed first in the past five consecutive years and placed in the top five in the past nine years.

Supporters of the team include Ohio State’s Center for Automotive Research, College of Engineering, Office of Energy and Environment, the Simulation, Innovation and Modeling Center as well as Smart Columbus.

More than 1,000 students from 12 North American universities will participate each year, gaining real-world experience solving complex engineering challenges and building teamwork and leadership skills that they will take with them into their future careers.

More: www.avtcseries.org

State, university leaders break ground on largest autonomous vehicle testing center in North America

Tue, 10 Jul 2018 00:00:00 -0400

A new state-of-the-art testing ground for autonomous and connected vehicles is one step closer to reality.

Gov. John Kasich joined leaders from The Ohio State University, the Ohio Department of Transportation, JobsOhio and other organizations to break ground on the Transportation Research Center’s new SMART Center Monday in East Liberty.

The 540-acre vehicle testing area will be the largest facility of its kind in North America offering year-round testing in all weather conditions. The first portion of the proving ground is expected to open later this year.

“What this is going to do is give people the opportunity all over the world to be going 24/7, to test in all conditions and to have multiple cars on the road,” Kasich said. “This is going to be the coolest place to go with your kids.”

Last year, Kasich joined President Michael V. Drake to announce a $45 million investment in TRC to build the new SMART Center. The College of Engineering has committed $24 million over five years to hire faculty and staff to support research into autonomous vehicle technology.

Ohio State Interim Senior Vice President for Research Randy Moses said the new center will be a boon to students and faculty in fields from engineering to computer science.“All of the students that will be out here will get a hands-on-experience and learning opportunities that are really unprecedented,” Moses said. “With smart vehicles, it’s not just about mechanical engineering anymore, it’s electrical engineering, it’s sensing, it’s the network. It is also communications and the social aspects of the human-machine interface. And so this allows teams much broader than in any college or discipline who can come together and work on these kinds of problems.”

The SMART Center comes as TRC is experiencing a record year in terms of the number of clients who use the facility. TRC President and CEO Brett Roubinek expects the trend to continue.

“The SMART Center will accelerate that growth and continue to create further jobs,” he said.

The SMART Center will also connect to the U.S. Route 33 Smart Mobility Corridor, a 35-mile stretch that will be one of the “smartest” highways in the country. The Ohio Department of Transportation is equipping the four-lane, divided highway with fiber-optic cable and wireless roadside sensors to allow open-road testing of autonomous and connected vehicles.

Breakthrough in controlling DNA-based robots

Fri, 01 Jun 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Researchers have devised a magnetic control system to make tiny DNA-based robots move on demand—and much faster than recently possible.

In the journal Nature Communications, Carlos Castro and Ratnasingham Sooryakumar and their colleagues from The Ohio State University report that the control system reduced the response time of prototype nano-robot components from several minutes to less than a second.

Not only does the discovery represent a significant improvement in speed, this work and one other recent study herald the first direct, real-time control of DNA-based molecular machines.

“Imagine telling a robot in a factory to do something and having to wait five minutes for it to perform a single step of a task. That was the case with earlier methods for controlling DNA nano-machines,” said Castro, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.The discovery could one day enable nano-robots to manufacture objects – such as drug-delivery devices -- as quickly and reliably as their full-size counterparts. Previously, researchers could only move DNA indirectly, by inducing chemical reactions to coax it to move certain ways, or introducing molecules that reconfigure the DNA by binding with it. Those processes take time.

In earlier work, Castro’s team used a technique called DNA origami to fold individual strands of DNA to form simple microscopic tools like rotors and hinges. They even built a “Trojan horse” out of DNA for delivering drugs to cancer cells.“Real-time manipulation methods like our magnetic approach enable the possibility for scientists to interact with DNA nano-devices, and in turn interact with molecules and molecular systems that could be coupled to those nano-devices in real-time with direct visual feedback.”

For this new study, the researchers joined with Ratnasingham Sooryakumar, professor of physics. He previously developed microscopic magnetic “tweezers” for moving biological cells in biomedical applications such as gene therapy. The tweezers were actually made of groups of magnetic particles that moved in sync to nudge the cells where people wanted them to go.

Those magnetic particles, while invisible to the naked eye, were still many times bigger than one of Castro’s nano-machines, Sooryakumar explained.

“We had discovered a way to harness the power of magnetic forces to probe the microscopic world—a hidden world of astounding complexity,” he said. “But we wanted to transition from the micro-world to the nano-world. This led to the collaboration with Dr. Castro. The challenges were to shrink the functionality of our particles a thousand-fold, couple them to precise locations on the moving parts of the machines and incorporate fluorescent molecules as beacons to monitor the machines as they moved.”

For this study, the team built rods, rotors and hinges using DNA origami. Then they used stiff DNA levers to connect the nanoscopic components to miniature beads made from polystyrene impregnated with magnetic material. By adjusting a magnetic field, they found they could command the particles to swing components back and forth or rotate them. The components executed the instructed movements in less than a second.

For example, the nano-rotor was able to spin a full 360 degrees in about one second with continuously controlled motion driven by a rotating magnetic field. The nano-hinge was able to be closed or opened in 0.4 seconds, or held at a specific angle with a precision of 8 degrees.

These movements could have taken several minutes if executed with traditional methods, Castro said. He envisions that complex nano-materials or biomolecular complexes could one day be fabricated in DNA-based nano-factories that detect and respond to their local environment.

The study was long in coming: The researchers decided to merge Sooryakumar’s magnetic platform with Castro’s DNA devices years ago. “It took a lot of dedicated work from several students to realize that idea, and we are excited to continue building on that. This study demonstrates an exciting advance that was only possible with this inter-disciplinary collaboration.” Castro said.

Those students were Stephanie Lauback—lead author of the paper, who completed the work to earn her doctoral degree, Kara Mattioli, Alexander E. Marras, Maxim Armstrong and Thomas P. Rudibaugh. Lauback is now at Juniata College, Mattioli at the University of Michigan, Marras at the University of Chicago, Armstrong at University of California, Berkeley, and Rudibaugh at North Carolina State University.

Their work was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office and the National Science Foundation.

Ohio State’s first satellite prepares for launch

Wed, 16 May 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Its name may playfully give homage to a 1980s video arcade game, but the technology on board The Ohio State University’s first satellite -- the CubeRRT -- could be vital for Earth science missions into the future. It is scheduled for launch on May 20.

Project leader Joel Johnson, professor and chair of electrical and computer engineering (ECE) at Ohio State, said the CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology Validation mission (CubeRRT) contains advanced sensors for observing Earth’s environment from space.

The Ohio State team named the CubeRRT satellite after “Q*bert,” one of the most popular video arcade games of the 1980s.

The technology on board is designed to solve a major problem for researchers by breaking through noisy radio transmissions that can interfere with efforts to detect from space what’s happening on Earth.

Johnson explained that Earth emits natural microwave frequencies, which scientists study with sensors called radiometers. The data from these sensors helps determine soil moisture, sea temperature, sea ice coverage, weather and much more.

Meanwhile, humans are busy making a racket on Earth.

As the need for wireless services worldwide continues to increase, Johnson said, the growth of manmade radio transmissions is making it increasingly difficult to detect Earth’s natural microwave radiation. This influx is called radio frequency interference, or RFI.

“The problem is only getting worse over time,” Johnson said. “The spectrum is getting more and more crowded, due to the continued rapid growth in demand for wireless services.”

The team has high hopes for this new radiometer technology. There are multiple radiometers without RFI filtering capabilities observing Earth right now, Johnson said, measuring weather and gathering data for oceanographers and atmospheric science.

“(Those radiometers) suffer very much from RFI and in many cases they can’t correct for it very well. They can get swamped by the manmade transmissions,” he said. “CubeRRT is a microwave radiometer that has a greatly improved processor to get rid of the RFI. The goal is to demonstrate this processor so future satellites can use it. The success of CubeRRT in space will demonstrate a new processing technology that will be very valuable.”

Soon, Johnson said, every Earth observing radiometer may require special processors to separate the RFI signals from the environmental data scientists need. His team specializes in such processors.

CubeRRT is scheduled for launch out of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia, on Sunday, May 20 at 5:04 a.m. It is integrated into a CubeSat deployer, the mechanical assembly sent to the International Space Station on a resupply mission, which will ultimately set the satellite into orbit this summer.

Watch a short video from NASA, which explains how CubeRRT works.

Read previous coverage of CubeRRT, “Navigating the Noise.”

At the ElectroScience Laboratory (ESL), Ohio State leads the CubeRRT project, in collaboration with team members from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratoryin California and Blue Canyon Technologies in Colorado, which provided the CubeRRT spacecraft with solar power, communication, guidance and navigation systems. Ohio State ECE Research Associate Professor Chi-Chih Chen also developed an innovative antenna design for the radiometer.

One Earth-observing radiometer currently in orbit on NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP)satellite serves as an example of how an RFI processor can provide better performance.

Days before Hurricane Matthew struck in 2016, Ohio State researchers used satellite maps of soil moisture to help forecast where power would go out along the East Coast.

Steven Quiring, professor of atmospheric sciences in the Department of Geography at Ohio State, said their results were 91 percent accurate – predicting 4.5 million people would be without power in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

Quiring said their work was possible because of data from the SMAP satellite mission and its radiometer RFI processing technology. He was able to cross-reference SMAP data with population density, land use, average wind speed and the duration and intensity of storms to make their forecast model.

“Many of our team members worked together on the RFI processor used in the SMAP mission,” Johnson said. “The CubeRRT RFI processor greatly expands capabilities and enables operations in higher frequency bands than were used in SMAP.”

Ohio State research associate engineer Christa McKelvey said the CubeRRT radiometer operates with a bandwidth 50 times greater than that of SMAP. Its processor is able to remove RFI for signals at a 1 gigahertz bandwidth, well above the possibilities within the 20 megahertz used in the SMAP processor.

Research Scientist Chris Ball, also at Ohio State, said CubeRRT is expected to enter orbit this summer and remain active for approximately one year, providing valuable data during its lifetime to demonstrate the validity of the technology. Deployed from the International Space Station at 400 kilometers above Earth, the satellite will eventually burn up as the orbit diminishes during re-entry.

A test mission on a smaller scale like this is a good idea, Ball said.

“Satellites are expensive,” he said, “and it is important to ensure new technologies have been validated in space before their large-scale deployment.”

Ball also described how CubeRRT is able to collect and process data onboard the satellite – as opposed to sending the information down to the ground for scientists to decipher, the method used for processing SMAP data.

“Doing RFI processing on board the spacecraft is a major game changer,” Ball said. “CubeRRT collects a lot of raw data to improve RFI removal, more data than there is the capacity to send down for processing on the ground. Only by processing on board the spacecraft can we make this work.”

The CubeRRT project is funded through NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO). Space access is provided by NASA’s CubeSat Launch initiative, which helps make satellite research more accessible to scientists by providing lower-cost pathways to space. CubeRRT’s RFI processor was installed on a CubeSat, which is approximately the size of a shoebox.

For the CubeRRT team, being able to see their scientific goals achieved is a professional milestone.

“This is my first space-focused project,” Ball said.

McKelvey performed previous satellite development at Northrop Grumman, but never got the chance to see it function in orbit.

“Large satellite projects require a much longer process, at least 10 years, and I left the company before I was able to see my project launch,” she said.

In preparation for the CubeSat launch, NASA is planning to provide further coverage, as well as live social media posts and interviews with the Ohio State team.

Editor’s Notes:

Live launch coverage will begin at 4:30 a.m. Sunday May 20 on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

Joel Johnson will participate in a prelaunch briefing at 1 p.m. Saturday May 19 which can be viewed on NASA Television and the agency’s website.