Nayani Adhikari

  • Doctoral Researcher
Start date: October 2021
Primary supervisor: Dr Sam Winter
Secondary supervisor(s): Dr Eugénie Hunsicker (Mathematical Sciences) / Dr Matt Pain / Dr Carol Smyth (University of Kent)

Nayani is a full-time PhD student working on a project in Biomechanics and Statistics. She graduated in Statistics (Hons.) in 2020 from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. She worked as an Assistant Lecturer 2020-2021 at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Research

Research title:  Diagnosis and Retraining of Asthmatic and Dysfunctional Breathing Techniques Using Opto-Electronic Plethysmography (OEP)

OEP uses a 3-D motion capture technique to track movements of the chest walls so that the breathing patterns can be assessed at rest and during exercises. The phase angle gives information about the relative timing of motion in sub-compartments of the thorax and abdomen. Up-to-date work has shown that phase angle and other metrics differ between healthy individuals and those with mild to moderate asthma and can also distinguish between these two groups and individuals with dysfunctional breathing patterns.  This project aims to diagnose and retrain asthmatic and dysfunctional breathing techniques using OEP.

Featured Publications

  • Adhikari, A., & Sooriyarachchi, M. (2020). Developing a goodness of fit test for a joint model of clustered survival and count data. Communications In Statistics - Simulation And Computation, 1-18. doi: 10.1080/03610918.2020.1825738