Lecturer in Engineering and Digital Technologies
College of Science and Engineering
Laura is a John Monash Scholar and Topic Coordinator/Lecturer for the Digital Design course, with a passion for sustainable design and improving quality of life for people with disabilities or from low socioeconomic backgrounds. She currently researches prosthetic design and service provision, in collaboration with Salford University, UK. This research focuses on using sensors, 3D scans and big-data analytics to improve prosthetics services for prosthesis-users, clinicians and service providers.
Laura worked for the Medical Device Partnering Program at Flinders University, to prototype and clinically evaluate novel medical and assistive devices, then undertook her doctorate at the University of Oxford, monitoring and developing a bioheat model of the heat-load on prosthesis-users during exercise and rest, and then worked as a postdoc at Southampton University, training Cambodian student-prosthetists to use accelerometers and 3D scanners to monitor physical activity, community participation and prosthetic socket fit. She developed software to classify activity-type from accelerometers, worked on machine-learning for understanding good prosthetic socket fit, and developed a respirator for clinicians in the COVID-19 pandemic. She has worked in a research and teaching capacity with engineers, technicians, prosthetists and assistive-device-users in Australia, UK, Cambodia, India and Papua New Guinea.
Doctor of Philosphy in Engineering Science (Prosthetics, University of Oxford)
Bachelor of Engineering (Biomedical, 1st class honours, Flinders University)
New Venture Institute - Business Enterprise graduate