Interdisciplinary research team treating Parkinson’s symptoms with artificial intelligence
In science there is a term called “ground truth,” the baseline from which data is judged for accuracy. For William & Mary student Ken Koltermann, the term may better be described as “boots-on-the-ground truth.”
The third-year Ph.D. candidate in computer science spent five months of the pandemic walking nearly two hours at a time to collect data on his gait – data that a team of researchers from W&M and Virginia Commonwealth University are using to develop a novel treatment for a potentially dangerous symptom of Parkinson’s disease called Freezing of Gait (or FoG) – the temporary inability to move while walking.
“I volunteered for it,” Koltermann said. “I thought, if I'm leading the data collection for this project, I have to do it myself.”
It was hard work – and it was personal.
