Two of Dr Alex Scott’s graduate students in Rehabilitation Sciences, Elizabeth Mojaeva (MSc) and Kohle Merry (PhD), were awarded scholarships from WorkSafeBC. Elizabeth’s project is “The effect of rigid tape on wrist postures during tree planting tasks” and Kohle’s is “Development of a Home-Based Physical Therapy Intervention for Individuals with Achilles Tendinopathy.”
Congratulations to both of our students on this outstanding achievement!
Elizabeth Mojaeva
Elizabeth is working on her MSc degree in Rehabilitation Science looking into musculoskeletal wrist injury management in Canadian tree planters. As a tree planter with a kinesiology background, she is both a patient and practitioner. In 2015, she started applying her clinical skills in the field, primarily using postural taping for injury rehabilitation. This technique allows injured planters to keep working either by offloading an aggravated tissue or keeping a joint out of an aggravating posture.
Injury prevention is the goal of her current project, with a focus on overuse tendon injuries of the wrist. Targeting wrist postures as a modifiable injury risk factor, she hopes to use wearable devices to train neutral wrist postures in tree planters.
Kohle Merry
Kohle was born and raised in Richmond, British Columbia. Growing up working on a farm, he was fascinated by all the machinery and developed a passion for understanding how machines can augment human capabilities. This passion continued into his post-secondary education earning a Bachelors of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering at UBC followed by a Masters of Applied Science in Mechatronic Systems Engineering at Simon Fraser University where he worked on a pressure-sensitive shoe orthotic for differentiating common workplace postures.
After working in engineering for a few years, Kohle returned to work with Dr. Alex Scott on a new mHealth therapeutic strategy for persistent Achilles tendinopathy focusing on intervention design and implementation. Kohle is looking to pursue the MPT/PhD program with a long-term goal of working as a physical therapist with a research appointment and develop more client-oriented rehabilitation interventions.