News
Dagmar, Aleksei, and Mahdi featured in Northeastern Global News on Whip Task
As part of the whip project, Jack the Whipper, a professional whip performer, visited the action lab as a subject for a motion capture and kinematic data collection session. By testing the limits of human motor control, we may begin to answer questions on how to apply such complex tasks towards robotics. See the full article here.

Jack the Whipper Visits Action Lab
For our whip-cracking project, Jack the Whipper, a professional whip-cracking stage performer, visited our lab and we recorded very cool motion capture and kinematic data. It was a blast!
Dagmar Receives Excellence in Mentoring Award
Dagmar received an award for Excellence in Mentoring from Northeastern – below are some happy faces!

From left to right: Mohsen, Dagmar, Helene, and Aleksei
Rashida Earns her PhD and Leaves the Action Lab
Rashida Nayeem defended her dissertation and leaves for the West Coast to work as Research Scientist at Apple.
Dagmar and Amy Lu featured in Northeastern Global News on Balance Training
In collaboration with Amy Lu, Dagmar published a meta-analysis of balance training: balance can be improved with practice – especially when you can dance along with it ☺. See the news article about the implications of their work here.
Good-bye to Sabrina!
Good-bye to Sabrina! After almost 5 years in the Action Lab working as an undergraduate research assistant, Sabrina is heading West to continue her endeavors at Stanford University.
Dagmar and Salah featured in Northeastern News on the World Cup and the Science Behind Soccer
Dagmar and Salah, avid soccer fans, give a neuroscience spin to the ball game in the article “The layers of science behind every World Cup kick”. Read the full story here.
First Paper on Whip ‘Cracking’ Published in Royal Society Open Science and covered in Article in the New York Times
Our first paper on whip ‘cracking’ – the manipulation of a complex object – was published in Royal Society Open Science and covered in an article in the New York Times. You can read the article at this link.
Reza Leaves Action Lab for Faculty Position at NAU
Good-bye to Reza! He leaves the lab for a tenure-track faculty position in Mechanical Engineering at Northern Arizona University.

The Cup Club (from left to right): Mohsen Sadeghi, Rashida Nayeem, Reza Sharif Razavian, Salah Bazzi.
Rashida received the Young Scientist award from the Society for Neural Control of Movement
Rashida received the highly selective Young Scientist award from the Society for Neural Control of Movement and will give a podium presentation at the annual meeting in Dublin, Ireland, on July 26. Congratulations Rashida!
Carissa graduated and launched her career!
Carissa graduated with a Master’s degree in Biology and already accepted one of her numerous job offers. She will soon start as a Clinical Research Associate at Syneos Health. Congratulations Carissa!
Sabrina graduated with high distinction!
Sabrina, our undergraduate lab member since 2018, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Behavioral Neuroscience and a GPA of 3.99. It does not get much better. Sabrina also received a record list of awards, ranging from the Goldwater Fellowship, a Rhodes nominee, to the Northeastern University’s President Award for Outstanding Scholarship. Congratulations Sabrina!
Dagmar and Aleksei were featured in Northeastern News on the Olympics on the jumps and aesthetics of ice skating
Dagmar and Aleksei shared their views on why quadruple jumps are so impressive in elite figure skating. Read the full story here.
Dagmar received the prestigious NIH-MERIT Award
Dagmar receives the prestigious $3M NIH-MERIT Award for her basic and translational research achievements on the control of motor skills – “only given to the most outstanding scientists supported by the Institute.”
Read more here.
Rashida is back!
After a 4-month internship at Facebook/Meta, Rashida is back in our lab. Welcome back Rashida!
Sabrina is nominated for the Rhodes Scholarship!
Sabrina is a National Nominee for the Rhodes Scholarship. An outstanding honor!
Dagmar received a US Scholar Fulbright fellowship
Dagmar received a US Scholar Fulbright fellowship to visit University Tor Vergata in Rome during her sabbatical. She will join Prof. Andrea d’Avella and our former postdoc Marta Russo there.
Sabrina Bond received the prestigious Barry Goldwater fellowship
Sabrina Bond received the prestigious Barry Goldwater fellowship. We are all proud of Sabrina!
Salah Bazzi Joined Institute for Experiential Robotics
Salah Bazzi advanced to a research scientist in the Institute for Experiential Robotics at Northeastern. While he will stay grounded in the Action Lab he will initiate more research links to robotics, his home turf.
Research on autism featured in the popular science magazine Spectrum
Our research on ball catching in autism, presented by Sabrina Bond at the Society for Neuroscience conference, was well received and covered in the popular science magazine Spectrum: Autistic children may have trouble predicting movements. Find the short report here.
Lab Advance with Newman’s Lab
We held our 8th Lab Advance at MIT, the annual all-day workshop of the Newman Lab of Neville Hogan and our Action Lab. Everybody gave inspiring presentations of their recent research advances and many ideas developed in the discussions

Dagmar featured in “The Science of Movement”
Dagmar is covered in a short video about “The Science of Movement”, showing some of our research on ballet dancers with some marvelous pictures of Patrick and Rachele from the Boston Ballet (watch here).