Shivayogi Hiremath, assistant professor in the Department of Physical Therapy, has been selected as an mHealth Scholar for the 2017 mHealth Training Institute (mHTI) at UCLA in August.

The NIH-funded institute teaches researchers to collaborate on developing high-end mobile products grounded in previous health research and their feasibility in real healthcare settings.

"I am honored by the opportunity to meet and learn from the experts in the field of mobile health,” Hiremath said. “I hope to learn how to develop models that capture behaviors specific to individuals and to integrate personalized behavior interventions with mHealth technology to improve rehabilitation, health, and wellness of people with disabilities." Hiremath earned his Ph.D. in Rehabilitation Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he was a postdoctoral fellow. He received the Mary Switzer Research Fellowship (2011-12) from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research and the PVA Postdoctoral Fellowship (2015-16) from the Paralyzed Veterans of America Research Foundation.

He studies health and physical activity patterns of people with disabilities in the community through wearable sensors and smartphone-based technologies; his current project – Just-intime adaptive feedback systems to assist individuals with SCI – is a physical-activitymonitoring and feedback technology that, when combined with behavioral programs, may improve the health and physical activity of people with disabilities.

The annual mHealth Training Institute is a week-long research intensive in which 30 researchers across disciplines work in teams to practice skills necessary for interdisciplinary research and development.