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Explant performed on first Bionic Breast study participant

In May 2025, a group of Human Fusions Institute researchers, led by Assistant Professor Emily Graczyk, PhD, joined researchers at the University of Chicago to implant the first participant of the Bionic Breast Project. The Bionic Breast Project aims to use nerve stimulation to restore tactile sensation to women undergoing mastectomy. The project provides a unique opportunity to evaluate sensory restoration techniques previously used with amputees and spinal cord injury participants in the breast for the first time. Between May and October, Human Fusions Institute postdoc Leah Roldan made several trips to Chicago to meet with the study participant and conduct experiments to assess sensations.

Experimental sessions were conducted twice a week over 12 weeks and involved electrical stimulation of the intercostal nerves to elicit a range of sensations on the breast, as well as to characterize these sensations using psychometric methods. Intact skin sensation was also evaluated during this time to better understand how touch sensitivity is impacted post-mastectomy and how these sensations may change over time. Preliminary results with this participant have been very promising for the continued investigation and development of the Bionic Breast technology for patients undergoing a mastectomy.

In October, the participant had the C-FINEs explanted during her reconstruction surgery. She is currently returning to day-to-day activities with no pain. The team remains committed to thorough analysis and to supporting her recovery, and she will continue to participate in phone surveys over the next six months to continue evaluating changes to quality of life and pain.

The Bionic Breast team is currently recruiting participants for the next implant. In November, the team held a symposium in Chicago, where Graczyk and Roldan presented preliminary findings and discussed the next phase of the work. Roldan said, “It was an excellent opportunity to reconnect with collaborators, share data, and hear feedback and perspectives from patient advisors who have undergone mastectomies”. Discussions on future directions, funding, and publication fostered a sense of shared purpose and collective progress among all involved.

A week after the seminar, Roldan traveled to the Society for Neuroscience conference and shared a poster with preliminary results from the first study participant at a poster session. She said many people stopped by her poster to ask specific questions and share insightful feedback, including several people personally impacted by breast cancer. Graczyk said, “The community’s interest in the project was encouraging to see”. The team emphasized both the widespread impact of the project on breast cancer and in future applications of electrical stimulation technology.

Luis Mesias defends Ph.D. dissertation

Luis Mesias recently defended his Ph.D. dissertation, “From Psychophysics Evaluation to Application: Developing Haptic and Visual Interfaces.”

Interested in haptics, electrical stimulation, and virtual reality, Mesias’s research brings together all three areas. Throughout his Ph.D. studies, he has conducted human-subject research across different subjects, evaluated multiple electrical stimulation paradigms, and developed virtual reality platforms to test and demonstrate his ideas. Looking back on his time at Case Western Reserve University, he is particularly proud of creating a software ecosystem that enables multiple software packages and operating systems to interface with a custom-built wearable surface stimulator that is now moving toward open-source release.

Originally from Guatemala City, Guatemala, Mesias decided to come to CWRU for its “strong emphasis on stimulation science within the biomedical space, while still giving me the freedom to explore how those ideas could be applied to virtual reality. That combination allowed me to work at the intersection of engineering, human perception, and emerging extended reality technologies.” He thanked his advisor, Associate Professor Michael Fu, for supporting him both as an undergraduate and during his Ph.D. years. “His mentorship helped me build a research niche at the intersection of VR and haptic interfaces, which has shaped both my interests and career goals. Beyond technical guidance, he consistently offered thoughtful advice on personal and professional growth.”

Now that he has finished his studies, Mesias hopes to pursue a career in industry, preferably with a company involved with haptics or virtual reality. While he enjoys conducting research, he said that his greatest motivation is “turning ideas into practical, usable technology.”

Human Fusions Institute team members present at Society For Neuroscience 2025

Multiple members of the Human Fusions Institute team had the opportunity to showcase their research to an international audience at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego this past November.

A Ph.D. student working with Assistant Professor Luke Osborn, Oranatt Chaichanasittikarn presented her poster, “High-gamma and beta electrocorticography activity represents perceived vibration intensity in human somatosensory cortex.” Her research focused on assessing the brain’s response to vibrotactile stimulation, and she analyzed neural activity, specifically electrocorticography (ECoG) signals on finger representation of the cerebral cortex, to understand how perceived vibration modulates neural activity. “I learned that neural activity can reflect qualities of perceived haptic information regardless of stimulation amplitude,” she said of her research. “High-gamma activity had the strongest reflection to perceived intensity, compared to vibration amplitude and beta activity.”

“The reception was very positive,” Chaichanasittikarn said of her presentation. “Several attendees asked insightful questions about the interpretation of the results from neuroscience, physiology, and engineering perspectives. Others were interested in the technical aspects, including the setup and how we decoded the vibrotactile information from ECoG signals.”

Laura McGann, a Ph.D. student in HFI director Dustin Tyler’s lab, analyzed user study gaze, grasp, and survey data for her poster, “The Influence of Neural Haptics on Attention, Control, and Perception in Immersive Human-in-the-Loop Interactions.” For this summer pilot study, McGann recruited fifteen human participants, each of whom performed a few hours of training and trial tasks across two sessions using an HFI immersive neural haptic human-in-the-loop interface, which gives participants direct body-motion control over a virtual robot arm and hand. Attending a large academic conference for the first time, she was happy with the reception to her poster. “Quite a few very interested people came by and asked good questions, many of which we’ve discussed in the lab, so it was encouraging to see we are thinking of things people care about.” McGann was also pleased to see recent HFI graduate Sedona Cady’s work featured in a presentation for Battelle, the company she now works for.

Roberto Peralta, a Ph.D. student in Assistant Professor Emily Graczyk’s lab, found that those who came to see his poster, “Amplitude-Modulated, High-Frequency Peripheral Nerve Stimulation Elicits Natural Sensation After Amputation and Tetraplegia,” wanted to stay in touch about results from future experiments.

Another Ph.D. student in Graczyk’s lab, Jonah Mudge spent three months conducting nerve stimulation and EMG recording experiments with two amputee participants to prepare his research poster, “Effects of Pulse Width and Pulse Frequency on Proprioceptive Joint Position and Force Sensation.” He not only enjoyed discussing his research with people who stopped by his poster, but also appreciated exposure to others’ research. “I spoke with a researcher who modeled the primary muscle spindle afferent response to gamma dynamic and gamma static intrafusal inputs. She determined that Ia muscle spindles can behave as a tunable feedback controller during perturbed locomotion, which greatly impacted my understanding of proprioceptive response profiles and could be very relevant to my research. I attended a lecture about the structure and organization of skin mechanoreceptors, which was very eye-opening.”

“I think the exposure to such multidisciplinary work was incredible,” Peralta said of the conference. “The tools and methods our fellow neuroscientists and engineers are using to push everything from cellular-level neuroscience to rehabilitation following any assortment of injury or neuropathic disease are inspiring. I came away from this conference with many new ideas and hope to collaborate with researchers and clinicians, both domestically and abroad.”

Margaux Randolph, a Ph.D. student in Tyler’s lab, also appreciated the collaborative, supportive atmosphere at the conference. “I am always reminded at conferences how lucky I am to be a part of such a driven and supportive community of students and investigators from across the world,” she said. “It was so helpful to get feedback on my research at my poster (“Micro-CT validation and acute muscle recruitment of a novel interfascicular electrode for peripheral nerve stimulation”), and to consider new dimensions of the work. This year, I also stopped at more posters that had nothing to do with my research, and it really gave me the perspective that neuroscientists and engineers are stretching the domain of what is known from every angle, and in amazing ways. After SFN, I have renewed energy to get after it in the lab, so I have something cool to report next time!”

 

 

Laura McGann Presents on an International Stage

Laura McGann, a Ph.D. student in Human Fusions Institute director Dustin Tyler’s lab, recently had a paper accepted for presentation and publication for the first time in her Ph.D. career. She presented her paper, “Multimodal Analysis of Sensorimotor Learning in an Immersive, Neural Haptic Human-in-the-Loop Interface to Inform Training and Design,” at the second annual IEEE Telepresence Conference in the Netherlands. This conference is a key event for the growing community of academics, researchers, and professionals in telepresence and teleoperation, making McGann’s participation and presentation a significant opportunity. Her paper will be published in IEEE Xplore in Spring 2026, further contributing to the field.

McGann’s presentation uniquely examined the teleoperator user experience, investigating underlying sensorimotor learning via real-time behavioral measures, in addition to standard overall outcomes. As she spoke with fellow conference attendees from Europe, North America, and Asia, she was pleased with the global interest in her work. The ability of the neural haptics interface–developed by second author Rachel Jakes and presented at the inaugural conference last year–to provide haptic sensation at the fingertips without requiring any coverage of the fingertips sparked curiosity. “Only one person had really heard of targeting the underlying nerves themselves, but years ago they decided to pursue alternative haptic interfaces because their team didn’t have neural expertise,” McGann recalls. “People kept asking if I’d brought a demo because they wanted to try it.”

“It was great to meet people in the telepresence and teleoperation research areas,” said McGann, pointing out that it can be hard to meet people in these areas at more general conferences. “Latency surfaced as one of the top issues which people are trying to tackle in various ways: advancing the networks themselves, compressing video feeds in some specific manner, or trying to predict user movements and act ahead of them so the acted and viewed movements line up.” Two presentations she particularly enjoyed discussed a generic breakdown of the elements and sub-problems of telerobotics, particularly underwater applications, and the idea of deploying simple telepresence robots to the homes of older adults, demonstrating the practical applications of our research in improving the lives of people.

Since returning to Cleveland, McGann is building on her preliminary research with a full user study with human participants.

McGann’s abstract:
Human-in-the-loop (HITL) systems, such as teleoperated robots and virtual reality (VR) platforms, must be intuitive to use and efficient to learn to reduce cognitive burden and improve performance across users with varying levels of experience. Usability can be improved by interface enhancements like haptic feedback and body-kinematic-based control, which leverage natural sensorimotor pathways, as well as by tailored training regimens that help users build internal models of system abilities and limitations. However, to advance interface and training design, we need to more precisely identify which sensorimotor capabilities these approaches strengthen and which interface features continue to challenge users. Multimodal metrics and task segmentation offer a promising framework for disentangling these sensorimotor challenges.
In this study, participants performed a VR-based HITL pick-and-place task before and after a ∼1.5-hour by-parts training regimen addressing general system components, including neural haptic feedback and hand-tracking-based control. We collected overall subjective experience data and assessed performance, grasp modulation, and gaze within and across trial segments to evaluate learned competencies and persisting challenges. Results demonstrate that task segment-level analysis combined with multimodal measures can reveal maneuver-specific user difficulties and adaptation strategies, providing a powerful tool for informing user-centered interface improvements and efficient training design.

Meet HFI’s Fall 2025 Intern, Gabriela Garcia

Gabriela García is originally from Peru, where she developed an early interest in mathematics and technology. Encouraged by her grandfather, who gave her her first computer, she began exploring how it worked and later enrolled in a computer hardware course at the age of twelve. This curiosity led her to study electrical engineering for her undergraduate degree, during which she discovered biomedical engineering and became fascinated by combining electronics with applications that could improve people’s lives.

After completing her studies in Peru, García moved to Germany to pursue a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. As part of her master’s program, she wrote her thesis together with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, focusing on ingestible electronic devices. These experiences reinforced her research interests and motivated her to pursue a Ph.D She is currently a research assistant and Ph.D. candidate at the Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, specifically at the Institute for Factory Automation and Production Systems (FAPS), where she focuses on social and humanoid robotics.

García is spending the Fall 2025 semester at the SaPHaRI (Social and Physical Human-Robot Interaction) Lab at Case Western Reserve University. She was drawn to Dr. Block’s lab and the Human Fusions Institute for their focus on understanding human psychology and translating it into technology. During her time in Cleveland, she will use HFI’s new motion capture system for a SaPHaRI Lab experiment on human-human interaction and work with Dr. Block on a project exploring expressive robots. Looking ahead, she hopes to continue her academic career and eventually establish her own research group in the field of social robotics.

Human Fusions researcher Dr. Emily Graczyk was interviewed by WKYC Studios to discuss the $9.9 million Department of Defense funding awarded to Case Western Reserve University and the Louis Stokes VA Medical Center to study sensory-enabled upper limb prosthetics.

In the interview, Dr. Graczyk explains that “Having a sense of touch improves so many different aspects involved in quality of life, including the sense of connectedness to loved ones, self-sufficiency, self-image and social interaction.”

Click here to read more and watch the interview.

“People with upper-limb-loss deserve to have better technologies that can improve their lives.”

A $9.9M grant has been awarded to CWRU researchers to advance prosthetic technology. Led by Emily Graczyk with Dustin Tyler as co-investigator, the team will launch a clinical trial of sensory-enabled prosthetic hands for people with upper-limb loss. This exciting work uses implanted electrodes to restore touch, making prosthetic hands feel more natural and connected. The trial will compare traditional devices with the iSens neuroprosthesis, aiming to transform independence and quality of life.

Check out today’s edition of The Daily for more info: https://bit.ly/46lq8xE

A member of the engineering and chemistry clubs at Magnificat High School in Rocky River, Lily Kuhlman was drawn to the field of engineering because it combines her math and science skills with her creative side. She has spent the past five years volunteering with Youth Challenge, a program that helps youth with disabilities participate in adaptive sports. Many of the youth she worked with had prosthetic devices, so she decided to reach out to Assistant Professor Emily Graczyk’s lab about interning at the Human Fusions Institute, where she spent the summer.

Kuhlman, who plans to study engineering when she starts college in Fall 2026, was drawn to the somatosensory neural engineering and human perception research that takes place in Graczyk’s lab and HFI. While she primarily focused on testing the Saturn II device, which measures and validates electrical pulses and wave forms generated to ensure its reliability, she also learned how to solder and build a circuit board and observed a study participant at the Cleveland Veterans Affairs Hospital.

Before Kuhlman embarked on her summer at HFI, her knowledge of engineering was limited. She takes great pride in the fact that her understanding has significantly increased and that she has acquired new skills. The experience of observing the study participant at the VA and witnessing the transformative impact of these devices on people’s lives was truly fascinating for her. “The transformative research, collaborative environment, and the creative approach to improving people’s lives intrigue me and have increased my intellectual curiosity,” she said.

As Kuhlman prepares to start her senior year, she looks forward to taking a hands-on mechanical engineering class. In this course, she and her classmates will work on disassembling and reassembling a motorcycle. She is still deciding which field of engineering she will study in college, but is leaning toward biomedical engineering because it bridges the gap between science and medicine, and because of her interest in healthcare. After college, she plans to use her engineering skills to continue making a difference in the lives of people with disabilities.

At eleven years old, Mahanthesh Ramchandra’s fascination with robotics was ignited by a friend’s older brother, an engineering student, who was building a robot for a capstone project. “I was completely captivated,” Ramchandra recalls. “What drew me in wasn’t just the technology, but the idea that you could create something tangible, something you could hold, feel, and physically interact with – something that existed in the real world, not just on a screen.” Less than a year later, Ramchandra built his own robot and ventured into the Google Science Fair, marking the beginning of his engineering journey.

Now, Ramchandra is the newest engineer at the Human Fusions Institute at Case Western Reserve University. His decision to join HFI was fueled by his excitement about the organization’s bimanual robots, haptic feedback systems, and virtual reality integration work. The prospect of working in a collaborative team that merges research and product development was a thrilling one for him. He sees himself as someone who thrives at the intersection of research and practical application. “Whether it’s securing $30K in grant funding for haptic glove development or winning hackathons with autonomous feeding systems, I love turning ambitious ideas into reality,” he said. “I believe the best robotics work happens when you can touch, feel, and interact with what you’re building – which is exactly what HFI is all about.”

Bringing significant experience from developing feeding assistance platforms at Cleveland State University and designing haptic feedback gloves at Quantanx Technologies, Ramchandra is well-equipped to contribute to HFI’s bimanual robot system controlled by haptic feedback. His work at these institutions has honed his skills in reducing system latency, making teleoperation more seamless, and ensuring precise and immediate haptic feedback. He is committed to creating a moment where the boundary between human and robot doesn’t exist.

With over 30 hackathon wins under his belt, Ramchandra is eager to work with the various robots at HFI, from bimanual robotic arms to humanoid and soft robots. “What I’m most excited about is the moment when we achieve truly seamless human-robot interaction, where operating the robot feels as natural as using your own hands,” he said. “There’s something deeply satisfying about building technology that people can physically interact with and feel connected to. I love turning ambitious ideas into reality. I believe the best robotics work happens when you can touch, feel, and interact with what you’re building.”

Outside of the engineering arena, Ramchandra enjoys rock climbing and slacklining.

Case Western Reserve University’s Human Fusions Institute welcomed a diverse group of interns as part of the Envoys program at CWRU’s Solar Durability and Lifetime Extension (SDLE) Research Center. Among them were Alexandria Brown, Alisha Fluker, Denise Huang, and Allyson Vinson, each bringing their unique perspectives and experiences to the program.

“It was great having four high school interns this summer,” said HFI Engineer Susan Schramfield. “We introduced them to new engineering concepts, and they were able to apply them to creatively solving problems right away. I’m excited to see how far these bright young students will go!”

Huang, a 2025 graduate of St. Martin de Porres High School in Cleveand, worked with Schramfield and HFI Lab Manager Mackenzie Elmer to code, assemble sensors, and organize HFI lab materials. Although she doesn’t plan to study engineering at Ohio State University this fall, she is proud of the variety of activities she was able to participate in at HFI this summer and the knowledge she gained. Through interactions with faculty, staff, and graduate students at HFI, Huang appreciated gaining insight into how technology can aid individuals with nerve injuries in regaining sensation in their bodies.

“The things that are done in this field are incredible,” said Huang. “It is helping many people who have lost function and giving them a chance to feel again.” She is excited to meet more people and start the next chapter of her life when she starts at Ohio State in a few weeks.

Vinson, a member of Solon High School’s Class of 2026, was inspired to apply to the Envoys program after hearing about it from her father, the former CWRU provost, and her mother, a CWRU faculty member. She plans to study engineering when she starts college in Fall 2026 and believed this internship was ‘the perfect opportunity to explore various aspects of engineering.’ The internship not only deepened her interest in the electrical aspects of engineering but also introduced her to the world of circuit boards and breadboards, shaping her future academic and career plans.

Vinson’s journey was one of personal growth and discovery. She spent her summer crafting and coding a foam sensor using Arduino and shadowing Ph.D. student Margaux Randolph to assist in making the electrodes for one of her studies. As her project progressed, she began collaborating with Ph.D. student Vlad Marcu on modeling and creating models of a nerve electrode cuff. She emerged from the summer with a sense of pride in her accomplishments and a wealth of new skills.

“Allyson was curious, productive, focused, and easy to work with,” said Marcu. “She was very much open to all sorts of things to learn, and that was cool!”

Vinson’s appreciation for the program’s interdisciplinary approach was evident. “I admire the specific approach that HFI takes on engineering and how closely HFI ties in the humanities aspect of engineering,” she shared. “I also appreciate the novelty and innovation of the products we worked on, and how these discoveries and breakthroughs are not widely known. Biomedical engineering, as I’ve learned through this program, is crucial for the future of medicine and technology, and for helping people.” She also enjoyed the lunch speaker series that SDLE had for interns.

“Mentoring the high school interns who worked at HFI this summer was great experience,” said Elmer. “I enjoyed getting to know each of them and learning about their interests. I hope they were able to develop a better understanding of what a career in science or engineering could look like.”

The Human Fusions Institute at Case Western Reserve University has pioneered the creation of prosthetic devices that have transformed the lives of those who have experienced limb loss. These devices have enabled individuals to hold and feel the touch of a loved one’s hand for the first time after losing their limb. Now, a dedicated group of HFI researchers, led by Assistant Professor Emily Graczyk, is collaborating with esteemed clinicians and scientists at the University of Chicago on a new frontier in sensory neuroprostheses. They are developing an implantable device that could potentially restore the sense of touch and reduce chronic pain for breast cancer patients who have undergone mastectomies. After more than a year of planning, designing electrodes, and testing their approach, the first implant was performed on the first participant in late May 2025.

Recruited for the study after receiving breast cancer treatment at the University of Chicago Medical Center, the patient received two implanted devices called C-FINEs around intercostal nerves in her chest. These intercostal nerves supply information to the brain about sensations on the breast, and the goal of the project is to use electrical stimulation through the C-FINEs to restore the sensory information lost after the breast is removed in the mastectomy.

The entire research team gathered in Chicago to observe the implant procedure. The patient first underwent a bilateral mastectomy as part of her cancer treatment by UChicago’s Nora Jaskowiak, M.D., who took time to preserve length on the intercostal nerves. After the breasts were removed, UChicago Plastic Surgeon Summer Hanson, M.D., Ph.D., identified the intercostal nerves and implanted the C-FINEs. The PI of the NIH grant funding the study, UChicago’s Stacy Tessler Lindau, M.D., also scrubbed in to assist with the surgery. Graczyk, who attended the surgery to share her expertise with the C-FINE technology, described the surgical team as “outstanding” and said she was “proud to see all the team’s hard work lead to this critical step.”

The patient is still in the recovery process and will return to the University of Chicago Medical Center on a biweekly basis over the next several months for research sessions. During these visits, the patient will undergo nerve stimulation tests to determine what sensations she experiences. This process is crucial for researchers to determine whether nerve stimulation can produce sensation and to understand what the sensation feels like. Eventually, her CFINEs will be removed when she undergoes breast reconstruction surgery as part of her ongoing cancer treatment. “We are very grateful that she was willing to be the first patient in this study and are excited for what we can learn together,” said Graczyk.

Over the next three years, the team hopes to implant the C-FINE devices in a total of eight mastectomy patients. This will enable researchers to understand the range of sensations possible with C-FINE stimulation and to identify differences among participants. In the future, they hope to link the nerve stimulation with inputs from a sensor placed within the breast and to assess the reliability of the sensation. While all implants for the current study will take place in Chicago, CWRU-based team members will frequently travel there for research sessions, most commonly postdoc Leah Roldan. Roldan played a critical role in the technical planning and coordination of the surgery and will oversee the nerve stimulation tests. Graczyk hopes implants can eventually be performed in Cleveland as well.

The overall project idea originated from Lindau, a gynecologist who works with breast cancer patients. Lindau noticed women were not having sensation after mastectomies and envisioned how using stimulation through a neural interface could restore the sense of touch after breast removal. The CWRU team includes Graczyk, Roldan, postdoc Rohit Bose, and Human Fusions Institute director Dustin Tyler, who is serving as a consultant.

Andrew Chen concluded​​ his undergraduate journey at Case Western Reserve University with a string of significant achievements. He was awarded the prestigious Ohio Space Grant Consortium Fellowship, presented his research to a global audience, and was recognized with the Senior Award for Research Potential at his graduation.

Chen was nominated for the Senior Award for Research Potential by Assistant Professor Alexis E. Block. “From the moment he joined my Social and Physical Human-Robot Interaction (SaPHaRI) Lab, he hit the ground running and quickly became an integral part of our team,” she said. “It has been a genuine pleasure working with him and watching him grow over the past year, not just as a researcher, but as a person. When he decided to pursue a master’s thesis in my lab, I was thrilled.”

As Chen embarks on his graduate studies, he is filled with excitement about the future. He will be developing an AI-driven robotic system that uses gesture-based movements to adapt behavior based on human feedback. “Before college, I never had any thought of being an engineer,” said Chen, who originally leaned toward pursuing a computer science or mathematics degree. However, his academic journey led him to a new path, and he is now eager to continue contributing to and learning about the latest robotics research as a graduate student.

The research award came with a $100 monetary prize.