Current Major Lab Projects
CIPHER (Shelhamer, Schubert, Kheradmand)
CIPHER (Complement of Integrated Protocols for Human Exploration Research) is a suite of several experiments that examine spaceflight adaptation across a range of body systems. Lab personnel serve as a co-investigators on the Vestibular Health component, which studies ocular alignment as a marker of otolith asymmetry. Shelhamer also helps coordinate data sharing, analysis, and collaboration across experiments, supports the NASA statistician, while also investigating correlations and synergies between vestibular measures and other physiological systems to build a more integrated picture of human responses to spaceflight.
Sensorimotor adaptation under stressful conditions (Chong, Tan)
This study examines whether acute stress affects sensorimotor adaptation during a prism-reaching task. Participants complete baseline, prism exposure, and post-exposure trials under both control and stress conditions, while wearing physiological sensors and reporting perceived stress. The goal is to determine how stress influences motor performance, adaptation, and aftereffects, with relevance to vestibular rehabilitation and spaceflight adaptation.
Otolith asymmetry (Schubert, Yogaratnam)
This project studies how otolith function and asymmetry affect balance, gait, and head-trunk coordination, with a focus on how these vestibular measures relate to postural sway and walking stability under different conditions, especially head tilt. Using tests such as vOCR, vHIT, VAN/TAN, and IMU-based gait and standing measures, the study aims to determine whether otolith deficits help explain instability beyond what is captured by semicircular canal testing alone. The findings may improve astronaut risk assessment for spaceflight and support more targeted clinical fall-risk evaluation and rehabilitation.
Neuroinflammation (Bhardwaj, Brown, Margolis, Queale)
This project proposes that long-term spaceflight harms cognition not through a single stressor, but through the combined effects of weightlessness, mild hypercapnia, and circadian disruption on multiple brain systems. It will build a phased “triple-hit” model to test these interacting effects and evaluate a multimodal Cognitive Resilience Countermeasure designed to protect cognitive function by stabilizing shared biological vulnerabilities. The work brings together engineering, neurobiology, and spaceflight physiology expertise to create a reusable platform with relevance both to future space missions and to broader problems involving chronic stress and cognitive decline.
Analysis of data from commercial spaceflights (Kazemnia, Anvesha)
This project pursues several approaches to the analysis of existing datasets from commercial spaceflights (Inspiration4, Polaris Dawn, Fram2, and others). The overall goal is to extract the greatest information possible from these unique data on non-professional astronauts on private missions. One study examines cabin-video recordings for movement biomarkers that correlate with SMS incidence. Another examines multi-system discordance via functional entropy, to determine if the “autonomic storm” of SMS has broader physiological manifestations.
Multi-system resilience (Queale, Kazemnia)
This project aims to create a new framework for tracking multisystem resilience in primary care by combining wearable physiology, environmental data, and clinical events over time. It introduces functional entropy and related early-warning measures to detect subtle physiologic change before illness becomes obvious, and will pair these methods with a clinician-friendly dashboard and a pilot prospective data pipeline. The overall goal is to make longitudinal health monitoring more interpretable, personalized, and useful for early detection and prevention. The special role of the vestibular system as a central node in physiological networks is a major emphasis.
Other interests
Human-Machine Teaming (human-robot interactions, autonomous systems). In association with JHU WSE and JHU/APL.
Space architecture and salutatory design (Brick).