Anna Knill

Anna Knill started her PhD at the Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory (RELab) in January 2023. Her research focus is on novel, technology based methods to assess hand dexterity and finger function in a clinical setting. For this she is doing her thesis at the cereneo center for interdisciplinary research.

Born in Uhwiesen (CH), Anna completed her Bachelor in Health Sciences and Technology at ETH Zurich in 2020 with an exchange semester at the University of Groningen. To focus more on her passion for rehabilitation and assistive technologies, she specialized her knowledge during her master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering (2022) at ETH. During this time, she had the opportunity to conduct a semesterproject at the RELab (working with the VPIT), did an internship at the AO Research Institute and performed a practical training at the Swiss Paraplegic Research Center.

Anna did her master’s thesis at Hocoma, in collaboration with the Sensory-Motor Systems Lab (ETH). She worked with a robotic upper limb exoskeleton, the ArmeoPower, and measured various neurological patients to extract kinematic parameters and hence better quantify the human movement during neurorehabilitation training.

Her long-term research goal is to implement a hand dexterity assessment platform into clinics, leading to a more profound understanding of distal upper limb impairment and therefore a more personalized therapy.