As the recipient of the IEEE Radar Conference 2019 Best Student Paper Award, I am truly honored to share my experiences with the AESS community. When I got the opportunity to pursue a PhD at the Signal Processing Group at Technische Universität (TU) Darmstadt in fall 2015, I had never worked with radar signals before. But quickly I was fascinated by the details that the radar back-scatterings contained. Starting out by analyzing the impact of assisted walking devices on the radar micro-Doppler signatures of gait motions, we discovered the yet unexploited potential of radar sensing for medical gait analysis. In our work on “Gait Asymmetry Detection Using Indoor Doppler Radar” we show that it is possible to detect gait abnormalities based on radar signals. Thus, we believe that radar can provide continuous in-home health monitoring and enable timely detection, or even prediction, of gait disorders. The goal of my PhD research is to develop advanced signal processing methods and machine learning algorithms to detect gait abnormalities, whenever they occur, based on radar signals.

The presented paper would not have been possible without the help and constant support of both my supervisors, Professor Dr.-Ing. Abdelhak Zoubir (TU Darmstadt, Germany) and Professor Dr. Moeness Amin (Villanova University, USA). From participating in radar experiments, to reviewing the paper and giving feedback on the presentation, they have contributed to this success through their outstanding expertise and invaluable experience. In particular, I would like to express my special thanks to Professor Dr. Amin and Villanova School of Nursing, who made it possible to collect clinical data of four volunteers with different gait disorders. I also would like to thank the remaining ten test subjects who participated in my radar experiments and provided radar data for evaluating my algorithms. Last but not least, I would like to thank all members of the Signal Processing Group at TU Darmstadt, who I am fortunate to work with. Thank you for being test subjects whenever I need new radar data and taking the time to give me detailed feedback on my work at any time.