Zimi Sawacha
Department of Information Engineering – University of Padova
Via Gradenigo 6/b 35131 – Padova Italy – tel. 049 8277662 / 7805 – fax. 049 8277699
email: zimi.sawacha@dei.unipd.it
Zimi Sawacha earned a Master Degree in Mechanic Engineering (2000- project and development of a strain gage force platform) and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering (2007) at the University of Padova, with a thesis on bioengineering applied to diabetic foot prevention. In 2001 worked as research fellow at Helen Hayes Hospital CRT (New York, USA) under the supervision of Mary Wotten and Stephen Sprigle, working on a NIH grant, “Optimizing Posture, Trunk Control and Reach of Wheelchair Users”. One year research fellow at Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli (Bologna) in order to develop a new protocol for children’s gait analysis. She has been with the School of Bioengineering, University of Padova (2007- up to now).She has been research investigator in national and international projects: the European Project “Myheart”, 6° Program (2004-2006); PRIN 2007 “Mobility assessment, age and physical activity related mobility variations assessment of adults through ambulatory and daily living monitoring“ (2007-2009), Progetto di Ateneo “Diabetic foot prevention through biomechanics analysis and custom foot orthotics”(2009-2011), Progetto di Ateneo “Development of a multi-physics diabetic foot model for plantar ulcers prevention in diabetic subjects” (2014-2016).She is reviewer for several international journals. She has been teaching classes of Bioengineering of Movement, in the Master degree of Biomedical Engineering, and in the Master and Bachelor degrees of Kinesiology at the University of Padova (Italy), from 2004 up to now.She is member of the Italian Society of Gait Analysis in Clinic (Siamoc), she is member of the Consensus Conference on Clinical Gait Analysis promoted by the same society, and she is the Conference’s President of the same society for the 2015 edition in Padova (Siamoc 2015). She is member of International Society of Biomechanics (ISB) and European Society of Biomechanics (ESB) and its Italian chapter, of the International Foot & Ankle Biomechanics Community (iFAB).Her scientific production includes 23 articles in peer-reviewed journals and more than 100 publications in international conference proceedings. Her research activity mainly concerns the human movement analysis and biomechanics applied to diabetic foot prevention, post-stroke patients, orthopaedics pathologies and sports science.