10/06/2026
Congratulations to our first PhD Fellowship recipient Maaike Goris and her fellow KU Leuven researchers who together with Delft university led international research investigating the detection of ‘’freezing of gait’’ using wearable sensors and artificial intelligence.
Their study, which was published in peer-reviewed journal NPJ Parkinson’s Disease, showed that detection and evaluation of this frustrating symptom of Parkinson’s disease was improved. Better measurement means doctors and researchers can more objectively track symptoms, evaluate treatments, and potentially personalize care. Instead of relying mainly on clinic observations or patient recall, future assessments may be able to capture what happens during everyday life.
“We have not only developed and tested the model on a single dataset, but have also validated it across multiple datasets with different measurement setups and annotators. This is important, as FOG detection often relies on subjective assessment. By accounting for this variability, we demonstrate that the model is more robust and generalises better,’’ Maaike told Anne-Marie Demoucelle.
Maaike was awarded the FWO-DPC PhD Fellowship in 2023 and is now on a research placement at Oregon Health & Science University.
“This team developed one of the first algorithms for FOG detection during running, so it is a particularly educational experience to be working here.”
If you would like to know more about Maaike and her work on FOG, please click on the links below to read her interview.
https://www.demoucelle.com/blog/charity-post/phd-fellowship-recipient/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41531-026-01407-7
