Research

Four questions, one instrument set.

Ageing, pain and athletic performance are usually studied by different people in different buildings. They share a substrate: how the cortex allocates resources to a body under load. We study that substrate directly.

fNIRS · Gait · Dual-task

Frailty as a brain phenotype

Frailty is scored at the body but decided in the cortex. We phenotype older adults across physical, cognitive, psychological and social axes, then ask which prefrontal signatures separate the subtypes — including during curved and dual-task walking, where compensation becomes visible.

tDCS · rTMS · Quantitative sensory testing

Pain that outlives its injury

Central sensitisation, pain neuroscience education, and non-invasive brain stimulation in chronic musculoskeletal pain — where the tissue has healed and the map has not. Our trials pair PNE with manual therapy, and tDCS with task training, to ask what actually changes the central representation.

3D motion · IMU · Joint mobilization

Movement under load

Orthopaedic manual therapy and sports medicine: chronic ankle instability, joint mobilization strategies, blood flow restriction, and return-to-sport decisions. The recurring question is what separates a compensation from a recovery.

Multimodal AI · Community cohorts

Prediction that reaches the clinic

Models built on cohort, wearable and neuroimaging data — validated in living labs, not only in held-out test sets. Urban and rural sites are built into the design, because a model that only works downtown is not a model.

Themes

Six things we are actually building.

The four questions above are how we think. These are the six deliverables the work is pointed at — the things that have to exist at the end for any of it to have mattered.

Precision rehab

A precision rehabilitation route for chronic pain that starts from central sensitisation rather than the painful tissue.

Evidence base

Orthopaedic physical therapy trials aimed at a clinical standard for musculoskeletal pain management.

Biomarkers

Functional recovery read through exercise physiology and biological markers, not questionnaires alone.

Digital rehab

AI and wearable sensing for combined cognitive–motor rehabilitation in older adults.

Neuromodulation

Neuromodulation as a treatment route for pain that has stopped responding to peripheral care.

Protocols

High-efficiency rehabilitation protocols after surgery and in degenerative disease.

Infrastructure

What we can actually measure.

A lab is its instruments and its access to people. We have both, and the second one is harder to get.

In the lab

  • fNIRS ×2 — prefrontal montage, ambulatory recording
  • Non-invasive brain stimulation — tDCS protocols
  • Autonomic monitoring — HRV, actigraphy
  • Motion analysis — markerless 3D, IMU

In the field

  • Smart Care Village — 5,000+ residents, longitudinal access
  • AI Healthcare Tower — urban living-lab site
  • Health management centres ×3 — community recruitment
  • Urban–rural design — built-in external validity