Assistant Professor @the Departments of Information Engineering and Medicine, Head of BiomovLab @ the University of Padova.
Zimi Sawacha is a mechanical engineer with a PhD in Bioengineering from Italy. Zimi discovered gait analysis on his way to New York @Helen Hayes Hospital in 2001, when she won a research scholarship to work on spinal cord injuries with Mary Wootten. Afterward she worked as a research fellow @Istituti Ortopedici Rizzoli. Since 2004 she is part of the Bioengineering Research Group of the University of Padova. Zimi is the group leader of the Bioengineering of Movement Section. Zimi’s research interests lie primarily in the area of foot biomechanics applied to diabetic foot prevention. This led her to develop, or use, new musculoskeletal models of the foot to investigates ways to stratify diabetic patients at risk for plantar ulcers. Other research interests include gait and posture analysis combined with surface electromyography applied to different pathologies, Markerless Motion Capture, Data mining, Sport Biomechanics with a special focus on ACL injury prevention. Recently, Zimi became interested in the development of methodologies to enable on field biomechanics analysis, and she is the PI of a patent for industrial invention (2017). She currently leads projects to develop musculoskeletal modelling based plantar orthosis and biomechanics screenings for onfield assessment of ACL injury risk. Zimi served as board of directors of Siamoc (2015-2019) and she was the Congress President in 2015. She has a strong connection with the ESMAC and its conference, from 2002 in Leuven, to winning the best paper in 2016 and having participated and presented in 9 editions, which is why she now would like to take a more active role.