Biography

Dr. Leif Simmatis’ research interests centre on the use of technology to quantify behaviour. Leif finished his PhD at Queen’s University in 2020 under supervision of Dr. Stephen Scott and Dr. Albert Jin. In his doctoral research, he used an upper-limb robotic assessment system to characterize sensorimotor impairments in individuals with a variety of neurological disorders including transient ischemic attack, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and epilepsy. The problems posed by robotic assessment data (scale and complexity) prompted his interest in the uses of statistical- and machine learning techniques for “making sense” of biomedical data. Dr. Simmatis’ postdoctoral research will be supervised by Dr. Babak Taati and Dr. Yana Yunusova, and will focus on applying machine learning techniques to the problem of identifying impairments in speech and orofacial motor control in individuals with neurological disorders.

Publications

Leif E. R. Simmatis, Spencer Early, Kimberly D. Moore., Simone Appaqaq, Stephen H. Scott. Statistical measures of motor, sensory and cognitive performance across repeated robot-based testing. Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation 17, 86 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12984-020-00713-2

Leif E. R. Simmatis, Albert Y. Jin, Michelle Keiski, Lysa B. Lomax, Stephen H. Scott, Gavin P. Winston. Assessing various sensorimotor and cognitive functions in people with epilepsy is feasible with robotics. Epilepsy & Behaviour. 2020; 103(A) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yebeh.2019.106859

Leif E. R. Simmatis, Stephen H. Scott, Albert Y. Jin. 2019. The Impact of Transient Ischemic Attack on Brain and Behaviour. Front Behav Neurosci 2019; 13:44. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00044

Leif E.R. Simmatis, Ghada Atallah, Stephen H. Scott, Sean W. Taylor. The Feasibility of Robotic Technology to Quantify Sensory, Motor, and Cognitive Impairments Associated with ALS Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Frontotemporal Degeneration. 2019 Jan 27:1-10. https://doi.org/10.1080/21678421.2018.1550515

Michael D. Wood, Leif E. R. Simmatis, J. Gordon Boyd, Stephen H. Scott and Jill A. Jacobson. Using Principal Component Analysis to Reduce Complex Datasets Produced by Robotic Technology in Healthy Participants. Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation. 2018; 15:71. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12984-018-0416-5

Leif Simmatis, Jonathan Krett, Stephen H. Scott, Albert Y. Jin. Robotic Assessment of Transient Ischemic Attack. PLoS One. 2017; 12(12). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0188786