Dr Yoshi Okubo completed his PhD (Sports Medicine) at the University of Tsukuba, Japan in 2015. He is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) and a Conjoint Lecturer at UNSW Medicine.
He is investigating reactive balance training for falls prevention and has developed an innovative Trip and Slip Walkway. It is a fundamental advance on other perturbation systems in that it can generate unpredictable trips and slips at any point on the walkway and thus replicate real life trips and slips. In contrast to traditional balance training, reactive stepping training directly trains stepping skills required to avoid falls in daily life. His study demonstrated reactive stepping which is critical at the moment of a trip or slip can be regained in older age.
His recent research focuses on helping people with an advanced age and neurological disease reduce falls using the reactive stepping paradigm. He is hopeful that this work will ensure that older people can maintain their independence as they age.
Phone: +61 2 9399 1065
Email: y.okubo@neura.edu.au