Mohammad Akhavanfar

PhD Candidate
Supervised by Ryan 2017-2021

Mohammad completed both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering at the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran. During his Bachelor’s degree, he expanded his knowledge and experience in both solid and fluid mechanics by collaborating with fellow classmates to build a homogenous charged compression ignition engine for the New Engine Laboratory at the Sharif University of Technology. He completed his Master’s of Science with the Spine Biomechanics research group supervised by Dr. Navid Arjmand, with his thesis being titled “The effect of Obesity on Spinal Loads during Various Activities: A combined In-vivo Modelling Approach”. Mohammad started his PhD in the fall of  2017 in the Spine and Movement Biomechanics Lab at the University of Ottawa under the supervision of Dr. Ryan Graham. He has collaborated on projects with Dr. Scott Brandon (University of Guelph).

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He has recently developed a novel publicly available MATLAB-based framework that improves muscle forces and joint load predictions using OpenSim (https://simtk.org/projects/stab-so). With this novel framework, Mohammad aims to develop and validate a new whole-body musculoskeletal model in OpenSim to be used in designing more effective ergonomic interventions for manual material handling tasks. 

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Themes

• Spine

• Ergonomics

• Musculoskeletal modelling

• Novel techniques

Funding Sources

• Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) PGS-D (2018-2021)

• University of Ottawa Excellence Scholarship (2018-2021)

• University of Ottawa Admission Scholarship (2017-2018)