Dr. Ann-Marie Hughes PhD, MSc, PGDip, BSc
Associate Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Visiting Research Fellowship Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering
Dr. Ann-Marie Hughes is an Associate Professor within the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Southampton. Ann-Marie’s research streams are centred on her understanding of movement assessment and user needs for innovative flexible rehabilitation technologies as well as their wider ethical, legal and societal implications, focussing on trust. She has used these to lead engineering design and evaluation of technologies, and assessment and development of international guidelines. These skills have also driven the design of multidisciplinary, research-led education and stakeholder engagement.
My driving interest is to optimise rehabilitation for people through the development and application of novel technologies.
Her research has evolved from manual to instrumented movement assessment and the development, application and user perspectives of novel technologies primarily to improve arm and trunk movement for people with mainly neurological conditions such as stroke and multiple sclerosis. These technologies have included Electrical Stimulation (ES), Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation (NIBS), Wearable and Rehabilitation Robotics, Telerehabilitation, Constraint Induced Movement Therapy (CIMT), and Movement Sensors.
In recent years, her work has focussed increasingly on flexible technologies, capable of being used both in clinics and in the home environment, as well as the use of big data and algorithms within the field. Her interests extend to the ethical, legal and societal implications of these types of technologies. Dr Hughes contributes on a regular basis to the Royal College of Physicians UK Stroke Guidelines.
Her work is international and transdisciplinary and has been facilitated by her diverse background with a PhD in Electronics and Electrical Engineering, an MSc in Information Systems, and a BSc and clinical experience in Physiotherapy (specialising in neurology). She led a European grant to develop an MSc in Advanced Rehabilitation Technologies with 10 European Universities across Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Rumania, Scotland and Switzerland. The programme is now being run in Paris and will start in Milan in 2020.
Prizes
2015 Mechatronics Best Paper Prize
2013 IEEE Control Systems Magazine Outstanding Paper Award
2009 Prize for best paper at the International Rehabilitation Robotics Conference (ICORR) Kyoto, Japan