Brian Umberger
@brianumberger.bsky.social
Biomechanics professor at the University of Michigan interested in the mechanics, energetics, and control of human locomotion
Movement is medicine 🏃
Motion is the new potion, and rest is no longer the best
Heal your injuries faster using motion as the new potion
Motion is the new potion, and rest is no longer the best
www.scientificamerican.com
January 24, 2026 at 12:24 AM
Movement is medicine 🏃
Reposted by Brian Umberger
Coding assistants are now generating code that fails to perform as intended, but which on the surface seems to run successfully, avoiding syntax errors or obvious crashes. Notably, GPT 5 performed worse than GPT 4 in testing. spectrum.ieee.org/ai-coding-de...
January 23, 2026 at 10:05 PM
Coding assistants are now generating code that fails to perform as intended, but which on the surface seems to run successfully, avoiding syntax errors or obvious crashes. Notably, GPT 5 performed worse than GPT 4 in testing. spectrum.ieee.org/ai-coding-de...
Reposted by Brian Umberger
Some of you may be asking: "What exactly is IMSI?"
This short video introduces the Integrative Movement Sciences Institute (IMSI) and our interdisciplinary work advancing movement science.
#IMSI #MovementScience #HumanPerformance #Biomechanics #Robotics
This short video introduces the Integrative Movement Sciences Institute (IMSI) and our interdisciplinary work advancing movement science.
#IMSI #MovementScience #HumanPerformance #Biomechanics #Robotics
What is IMSI?
YouTube video by IMSI - Integrative Movement Sciences Institute
youtu.be
January 22, 2026 at 10:49 PM
Some of you may be asking: "What exactly is IMSI?"
This short video introduces the Integrative Movement Sciences Institute (IMSI) and our interdisciplinary work advancing movement science.
#IMSI #MovementScience #HumanPerformance #Biomechanics #Robotics
This short video introduces the Integrative Movement Sciences Institute (IMSI) and our interdisciplinary work advancing movement science.
#IMSI #MovementScience #HumanPerformance #Biomechanics #Robotics
Reposted by Brian Umberger
My course syllabi now contain a link to this document, "why Professor Holliday Doesn't Use Generative AI". Feel free to share/repurpose or just check out the links for your own reference. It won't stop some of them, but I want students to know why. docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Why Professor Holliday Doesn’t Use Generative “AI”
Why Professor Holliday Doesn’t Use Generative “AI” This is a (very) incomplete list of journalistic and scholarly sources that provide information about limitations and documented drawbacks of variou...
docs.google.com
January 21, 2026 at 3:28 PM
My course syllabi now contain a link to this document, "why Professor Holliday Doesn't Use Generative AI". Feel free to share/repurpose or just check out the links for your own reference. It won't stop some of them, but I want students to know why. docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Reposted by Brian Umberger
Here’s the deal with the FY26 NIH funding bill:
One line in the 1000+ pg bill = significantly less science.
The increase to ~40% of grants moving to MYF is estimated to result in a 35% decrease in the NUMBER of NIH grants funded annually—moving the paylines from 10% to around 4%.
THIS IS BAD.
One line in the 1000+ pg bill = significantly less science.
The increase to ~40% of grants moving to MYF is estimated to result in a 35% decrease in the NUMBER of NIH grants funded annually—moving the paylines from 10% to around 4%.
THIS IS BAD.
January 21, 2026 at 1:11 PM
Here’s the deal with the FY26 NIH funding bill:
One line in the 1000+ pg bill = significantly less science.
The increase to ~40% of grants moving to MYF is estimated to result in a 35% decrease in the NUMBER of NIH grants funded annually—moving the paylines from 10% to around 4%.
THIS IS BAD.
One line in the 1000+ pg bill = significantly less science.
The increase to ~40% of grants moving to MYF is estimated to result in a 35% decrease in the NUMBER of NIH grants funded annually—moving the paylines from 10% to around 4%.
THIS IS BAD.
Reposted by Brian Umberger
Writing is thinking
Outsourcing the entire task of writing to LLMs will deprive us of the essential creative task of interpreting our findings and generating a deeper theoretical understanding of the world.
Outsourcing the entire task of writing to LLMs will deprive us of the essential creative task of interpreting our findings and generating a deeper theoretical understanding of the world.
January 18, 2026 at 6:15 PM
Writing is thinking
Outsourcing the entire task of writing to LLMs will deprive us of the essential creative task of interpreting our findings and generating a deeper theoretical understanding of the world.
Outsourcing the entire task of writing to LLMs will deprive us of the essential creative task of interpreting our findings and generating a deeper theoretical understanding of the world.
Reposted by Brian Umberger
Reposted by Brian Umberger
My graduate ethics course was canceled after I refused to censor discussions of race, gender, and sexuality. Ethics is about people and power, not scripted silence. This is bigger than one class. I address it in my next video, premiering at 5:00 PM today.
youtu.be/wP_W3AHcDxY
youtu.be/wP_W3AHcDxY
Texas A&M CANCELED My Ethics Course: I Refused to CENSOR my RACE.
YouTube video by The Bright Professor
youtu.be
January 17, 2026 at 7:20 PM
My graduate ethics course was canceled after I refused to censor discussions of race, gender, and sexuality. Ethics is about people and power, not scripted silence. This is bigger than one class. I address it in my next video, premiering at 5:00 PM today.
youtu.be/wP_W3AHcDxY
youtu.be/wP_W3AHcDxY
Reposted by Brian Umberger
Some Parkinson’s patients experience sleep disorders and a diminished sense of smell years before motor symptoms appear. Researchers share other early signs of the disease—and efforts to study environmental factors that may contribute to it.
Teasing Apart The Causes And Early Signs Of Parkinson’s
Some Parkinson’s patients may experience strange symptoms, like smell loss and sleep disorders, decades before diagnosis.
buff.ly
January 16, 2026 at 7:04 PM
Some Parkinson’s patients experience sleep disorders and a diminished sense of smell years before motor symptoms appear. Researchers share other early signs of the disease—and efforts to study environmental factors that may contribute to it.
Reposted by Brian Umberger
Thanks to @joss-openjournals.bsky.social for publishing OpenSim Creator's official announcement paper!
Just published in JOSS: 'OpenSim Creator: An Interactive User Interface for Building OpenSim Musculoskeletal Models' https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.08284
January 9, 2026 at 5:24 PM
Thanks to @joss-openjournals.bsky.social for publishing OpenSim Creator's official announcement paper!
Reposted by Brian Umberger
We want a better world, fullfield of biomechanics!
What we do to facilitate this? We have the grant program sponsored by The Biomechanics Initiative!
Apply today!
thebiomechanicsinitiative.org/grants-and-s...
What we do to facilitate this? We have the grant program sponsored by The Biomechanics Initiative!
Apply today!
thebiomechanicsinitiative.org/grants-and-s...
LinkedIn
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
lnkd.in
January 10, 2026 at 11:35 AM
We want a better world, fullfield of biomechanics!
What we do to facilitate this? We have the grant program sponsored by The Biomechanics Initiative!
Apply today!
thebiomechanicsinitiative.org/grants-and-s...
What we do to facilitate this? We have the grant program sponsored by The Biomechanics Initiative!
Apply today!
thebiomechanicsinitiative.org/grants-and-s...
2026, continuing to outdo itself… 🎸
Bob weir 😔
RIP
Come wash the nighttime clean
Come grow this scorched ground green
RIP
Come wash the nighttime clean
Come grow this scorched ground green
January 11, 2026 at 12:55 AM
2026, continuing to outdo itself… 🎸
Reposted by Brian Umberger
A reexamination of the femur and ulna of Sahelanthropus tchadensis, commonly regarded as the earliest known hominin, confirms that this species walked on two legs.
Learn more in #ScienceAdvances: https://scim.ag/4pU9qwI
Learn more in #ScienceAdvances: https://scim.ag/4pU9qwI
Earliest evidence of hominin bipedalism in Sahelanthropus tchadensis
Limb bones of the earliest known hominin, Sahelanthropus, are chimpanzee-like in shape but demonstrate adaptations for bipedalism.
scim.ag
January 6, 2026 at 7:12 PM
A reexamination of the femur and ulna of Sahelanthropus tchadensis, commonly regarded as the earliest known hominin, confirms that this species walked on two legs.
Learn more in #ScienceAdvances: https://scim.ag/4pU9qwI
Learn more in #ScienceAdvances: https://scim.ag/4pU9qwI
Reposted by Brian Umberger
🎶 Get ready to rumble! In hopes of improving vocal health care, researchers are learning how death metal singers safely produce extreme vocal distortions: buff.ly/CX8RaR6
December 30, 2025 at 6:55 PM
🎶 Get ready to rumble! In hopes of improving vocal health care, researchers are learning how death metal singers safely produce extreme vocal distortions: buff.ly/CX8RaR6
Reposted by Brian Umberger
The National Science Foundation starts 2026 with a new management structure that affects every scientist with--or applying for--NSF funding. Here's what you need to know. www.science.org/content/arti...
The National Science Foundation just had a big reorganization. Here are five things to know
Divisions and rotators disappear as more career staff become supervisors
www.science.org
December 29, 2025 at 2:54 PM
The National Science Foundation starts 2026 with a new management structure that affects every scientist with--or applying for--NSF funding. Here's what you need to know. www.science.org/content/arti...
Reposted by Brian Umberger
😃 In a new article published in J Biomech, Maarleveld et al. provide an overview on experimentally derived strength parameters, including physiological cross-sectional area, muscle mass, and relative muscle mass.
👀https://buff.ly/tKLBOii
👀https://buff.ly/tKLBOii
December 27, 2025 at 8:12 PM
😃 In a new article published in J Biomech, Maarleveld et al. provide an overview on experimentally derived strength parameters, including physiological cross-sectional area, muscle mass, and relative muscle mass.
👀https://buff.ly/tKLBOii
👀https://buff.ly/tKLBOii
I'm right there with our yard frog 🐸 and pig 🐷 as they do their best to ride out what's left of this bleak year
December 26, 2025 at 8:10 PM
I'm right there with our yard frog 🐸 and pig 🐷 as they do their best to ride out what's left of this bleak year
Reposted by Brian Umberger
Excited to share our work on how just a single camera can provide valuable visualizations and quantitative metrics to functional tasks. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Clinical Assessments: Use of Video-Based Pose Estimation to Augment Post-Stroke Upper Limb Assessment of Bilateral Tasks - Rachel L Hawe, Shelby Ziccardi, Desmond Asante,...
Clinical assessments of the post-stroke upper limbs have several limitations in that they focus primarily on unilateral movements, rely on observer-based ordina...
journals.sagepub.com
December 22, 2025 at 7:52 PM
Excited to share our work on how just a single camera can provide valuable visualizations and quantitative metrics to functional tasks. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
My motto coming down the home stretch of this especially hectic semester was based on the lyrics to a Gin Blossoms' song
If you don't expect too much from me, you might not be let down 🎶
#AcademicSky
If you don't expect too much from me, you might not be let down 🎶
#AcademicSky
December 20, 2025 at 10:25 PM
My motto coming down the home stretch of this especially hectic semester was based on the lyrics to a Gin Blossoms' song
If you don't expect too much from me, you might not be let down 🎶
#AcademicSky
If you don't expect too much from me, you might not be let down 🎶
#AcademicSky
Industry-based postdoc and intern opportunities:
The Robotics division of Honda Research Institute USA (San Jose, CA) has open postdoctoral and PhD-level summer internship positions in human biomechanical modeling
The Robotics division of Honda Research Institute USA (San Jose, CA) has open postdoctoral and PhD-level summer internship positions in human biomechanical modeling
Postdoctoral Scientist: Human Biomechanics - Honda Research Institute USA
usa.honda-ri.com
December 20, 2025 at 7:37 PM
Industry-based postdoc and intern opportunities:
The Robotics division of Honda Research Institute USA (San Jose, CA) has open postdoctoral and PhD-level summer internship positions in human biomechanical modeling
The Robotics division of Honda Research Institute USA (San Jose, CA) has open postdoctoral and PhD-level summer internship positions in human biomechanical modeling
Reposted by Brian Umberger
We took a stab at how to infer both the dynamics and control parameters of partially-observable systems.
It’s a nasty problem, but @vgeadah.bsky.social made tremendous progress, ending up with some really elegant formalisms.
It’s a nasty problem, but @vgeadah.bsky.social made tremendous progress, ending up with some really elegant formalisms.
In a system subject to unobserved control, can you infer both the underlying dynamics and the control objective? 🤔
A year ago, I was presenting our work at IEEE CDC on solving this problem for stochastic LQR.
arxiv.org/abs/2502.15014
Short 🧵 on the results, and how I think about them a year later.
A year ago, I was presenting our work at IEEE CDC on solving this problem for stochastic LQR.
arxiv.org/abs/2502.15014
Short 🧵 on the results, and how I think about them a year later.
December 18, 2025 at 6:51 PM
We took a stab at how to infer both the dynamics and control parameters of partially-observable systems.
It’s a nasty problem, but @vgeadah.bsky.social made tremendous progress, ending up with some really elegant formalisms.
It’s a nasty problem, but @vgeadah.bsky.social made tremendous progress, ending up with some really elegant formalisms.
Reposted by Brian Umberger
“Swearing is literally a calorie-neutral, drug-free, low-cost, readily available tool at our disposal for when we need a boost in performance.”
Does swearing make you stronger? Science says yes.
“A calorie-neutral, drug-free, low-cost, readily available tool for when we need a boost in performance.”…
arstechnica.com
December 18, 2025 at 9:19 PM
“Swearing is literally a calorie-neutral, drug-free, low-cost, readily available tool at our disposal for when we need a boost in performance.”
Reposted by Brian Umberger
If you're (1) into nhp neurophysiology and/or biological motor control, (2) a foreign big shot and (3) interested in moving here, please reach out -- this new program looks extremely attractive (min. $8M over 8y)! www.uwo.ca/research/can...
Canada-Impact-Plus - Research - Western University
www.uwo.ca
December 18, 2025 at 9:15 PM
If you're (1) into nhp neurophysiology and/or biological motor control, (2) a foreign big shot and (3) interested in moving here, please reach out -- this new program looks extremely attractive (min. $8M over 8y)! www.uwo.ca/research/can...
Reposted by Brian Umberger
⏳ Nominations for @amsocbiomech.bsky.social Individual Awards are due January 15.
From the Borelli to the Pre-Doc Award, help us celebrate the leaders and innovators in #Biomechanics.
Nominate a peer (or yourself!) today: asbweb.org/society-awards/
#Biomechanics #ASB2026 #ScienceExcellence
From the Borelli to the Pre-Doc Award, help us celebrate the leaders and innovators in #Biomechanics.
Nominate a peer (or yourself!) today: asbweb.org/society-awards/
#Biomechanics #ASB2026 #ScienceExcellence
December 18, 2025 at 8:40 PM
⏳ Nominations for @amsocbiomech.bsky.social Individual Awards are due January 15.
From the Borelli to the Pre-Doc Award, help us celebrate the leaders and innovators in #Biomechanics.
Nominate a peer (or yourself!) today: asbweb.org/society-awards/
#Biomechanics #ASB2026 #ScienceExcellence
From the Borelli to the Pre-Doc Award, help us celebrate the leaders and innovators in #Biomechanics.
Nominate a peer (or yourself!) today: asbweb.org/society-awards/
#Biomechanics #ASB2026 #ScienceExcellence
If carried out as planned, this study will be taught to thousands of research students as a contemporary example in the research ethics section of future responsible conduct of research courses.
December 18, 2025 at 3:45 AM
If carried out as planned, this study will be taught to thousands of research students as a contemporary example in the research ethics section of future responsible conduct of research courses.