CU-WISE Blogs

by Fareen Lavji We miss her so much; we could not help but feature her again. She is one of our favourites, it’s Franny! Francesca recently, and successfully, defended her master’s thesis entitled, “Design and Validation of a Force-Sensing Piano Key to Assess Pianist Biomechanics.” Her research began with an interest in musician injury. Although playing the piano is a common activity, the physical demand of playing is often overlooked. One study found that up to 71% of professional musicians and 87% of music students experience a performance-related musculoskeletal disorder at some point in their career. Francesca’s research looked to gain an understanding of why injury rates are so high at the base level of a finger-key interaction. She developed a novel force-sensing piano key. Her integrated sensing equipment inside of a replica piano key developed a method of measuring the position and 3-axis force application on the key. Francesca is also the recipient of the 2019-20 C...

My first blog for the 2020 - 2021 year! I'm going to start off this blog by giving a quick introduction to myself. My name is Zoya and I’m currently finishing up my undergraduate degree in Computer Systems Engineering. I’m super excited to be a part of the CU-WISE team this year and to be bringing you blog posts every month! 2020 has been quite the year so far, from a global pandemic, to everything else that’s been going on around the world, it can be a lot to take in. It’s normal to feel scared, helpless, nervous, sad, and any other emotion during this time. The lockdown started right around the most stressful time for university students - the end of the semester and exam time. Students and professors alike had to quickly get used to this new normal and adapt to virtual learning platforms. I think we can all go our lifetime without hearing the term “zoom session” again. This whole experience can be very stressful and take a toll on everyone in different ways. I personall...