Instructor

Rodger Kram and Alaa Ahmed

Rodger Kram, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Integrative Physiology Dept. at the University of Colorado Boulder. He earned a his Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard in 1991 and was a post-doc then assistant professor at Berkeley until 2000. His primary research interest is the biomechanical basis for the energetic cost of locomotion. He studies basic scientific aspects of walking and running in healthy, young people, and how obesity, aging and prosthetics affect locomotion energetics and mechanics. He has published over 80 peer-reviewed research articles and has studied more than 40 animal species including ants, antelopes, elephants, tortoises, penguins and kangaroos.

Alaa Ahmed received a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from the American University in Cairo in 1999 and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 2005. She also holds two MSc degrees in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering. She spent one year as an NIH post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Medical School. From 2006-2008, she was a Whitaker International Fellow and post-doctoral researcher in sensorimotor control at the University of Cambridge. In 2008, she joined the University of Colorado Boulder as an assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology. Her research program uses a neuroeconomic approach that combines techniques from neuroscience, economics, psychology, and engineering to investigate the costs and constraints underlying human sensorimotor decision-making, learning, and control. Ahmed is the recipient of an NSF Career Award and a DARPA Young Faculty Award presented to “rising research stars in junior faculty positions at U.S. academic institutions.” Her work has been featured in Forbes, Wired, Time, PBS, and other national and international media outlets.