The Dance Scientist

Dr. Kelli Sharp and the Research Team prepare to gather motion-capture data. / Photo by Will Tee Yang
View the full pictorial in CONNECT, the quarterly magazine for UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts

Dr. Kelli Sharp is not your typical dance professor. She spends her days collecting and analyzing motion-capture data to investigate movement patterns, responses to stimuli, and the acceleration of movement. By working with real-time motor functions of the human body, she can understand the relationship between the control system and what reinforcement training can do to improve those functions.

Dr. Sharp is currently working with her team of interdisciplinary researchers on a study to understand motor learning patterns in dancers to aid their performance, and then apply this knowledge to understanding various neurological disorders. Hours of working with tape measures, bodysuits and marker sensors may just redefine what you think when someone says dance.         

 
Image - The Research Team (left to right): Jason Xu, second year UCI Medical student; Merav Senesh, Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering at UCI; Brady Carbajal, Senior at Cal State University, Long Beach; Dr. Kelli Sharp, Assistant Professor Dance Science and Co-Director of iMOVE Laboratory; David Ho, second year medical student at Western University of Health Sciences and UCI School of Biological Science Alumnus. (Not pictured, Dr. David Reinkensmeyer, Professor Anatomy & Neurobiology in Mechanical Engineering.)
 
 
Learn more at: imove.eng.uci.edu

 

CONNECT - Winter 2020