Dr Rosie Morris

Associate Professor

Department: Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

I am currently a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Advanced Fellow. My research focuses on the relationship between mobility (including gait, turning, balance and falls) and cognition in older adults and people with neurological condictions (e.g. Parkinson’s disease, Dementia etc.), and the importance of this relationship to clinical practice; particularly Physiotherapy. To conduct my research and understand the relationships involved I use novel digital technologies that could be applied within clinical practice in the future. Ultimately, my research aims to develop new understanding of neurological impairment and enhance clinical assessment and rehabilitation.

I completed my NIHR funded doctoral research at Newcastle University, which focused on gait as a biomarker for cognitive decline in people with Parkinson’s disease with additional work focusing on the gait-cognition relationship in people with PD in the ‘real-world’ environment. I completed a postdoctoral training year at Newcastle University working on a project that focused on non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation as an intervention to increase cholinergic output and how this related to gait and cognition performance. Following this I became a postdoctoral fellow at Oregon Health and Science University (USA), where my main focus was on a large NIH-funded national study (Pacific-UDALL) assessing the role of Parkinson’s disease genotype and how this influences the gait-cognition relationship. I was awarded an NIHR Advanced Fellowship which commenced September 2024, this award supports the transition to an independent investigator and will fund work to co-design and assess a rehabiltation programme to improve turning in people with Parkinson's disease.

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Better understanding fall risk: AI-based computer vision for contextual gait assessment, Moore, J., McMeekin, P., Stuart, S., Morris, R., Celik, Y., Walker, R., Hetherington, V., Godfrey, A. 1 Nov 2024, In: Maturitas
Contextualizing remote fall risk: Video data capture and implementing ethical AI, Moore, J., McMeekin, P., Parkes, T., Walker, R., Morris, R., Stuart, S., Hetherington, V., Godfrey, A. 6 Mar 2024, In: npj Digital Medicine
Coproduction and Usability of a Smartphone App for Falls Reporting in Parkinson Disease, Wales, J., Moore, J., Naisby, J., Ratcliffe, N., Barry, G., Amjad, A., Godfrey, A., Standerline, G., Webster, E., Morris, R. 1 Feb 2024, In: Physical Therapy
CuePD: An IoT approach for Enhancing Gait Rehabilitation in older adults through Personalised Music Cueing, Wall, C., Young, F., McMeekin, P., Hetherington, V., Walker, R., Morris, R., Barry, G., Celik, Y., Godfrey, A. 1 Oct 2024, In: IEEE Sensors Letters
Digital measurement of ocular microtremor in Parkinson’s Disease: Protocol for a pilot study to assess reliability and clinical validation, Graham, L., Vitorio, R., Walker, R., Godfrey, A., Morris, R., Stuart, S. 24 Oct 2024, In: PLoS One
iVOMS: Instrumented Vestibular Ocular Motor Screen in healthy controls and mild traumatic brain injury, Graham, L., Powell, D., Campbell, K., Morris, R., Vitorio, R., Parrington, L., Antonellis, P., Godfrey, A., King, L., Stuart, S. 1 Jul 2024, In: Medical Engineering and Physics
A cholinergic contribution to postural control and freezing of gait in Parkinson’s disease, Yarnall, A., Morris, R. 1 Aug 2023, In: Brain
Bespoke fuzzy logic design to automate a better understanding of running gait analysis, Young, F., Stuart, S., McNicol, R., Morris, R., Downs, C., Coleman, M., Godfrey, A. 1 May 2023, In: IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics
Cognition and Freezing of Gait in Parkinson's Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, Monaghan, A., Gordon, E., Graham, L., Hughes, E., Peterson, D., Morris, R. 1 Apr 2023, In: Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
Combination of Clinical and Gait Measures to Classify Fallers and Non-Fallers in Parkinson’s Disease, Araújo, H., Smaili, S., Morris, R., Graham, L., Das, J., McDonald, C., Walker, R., Stuart, S., Vitório, R. 11 May 2023, In: Sensors

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Invited talk: Parkinson's Research at Northumbria University 2020

PGR Supervision

Lisa Graham Digital Eye-Movement Outcomes as a Biomarker for Neurological Injury and Disease Start Date: 15/09/2022
Julia Das Visuo-cognitive training in Parkinson’s disease Start Date: 17/01/2024 End Date: 25/06/2024
Patrick Tait Neural correlates of balance in ageing and Parkinson's disease (PD) Start Date: 01/10/2022

Qualifications

Neurosciences PhD May 30 2017
Physiotherapy MSc January 01 2013
Neurosciences BSc (Hons) June 01 2010
Member Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) 2019

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