Publication2025
Journal of Neuroscience Publication on Brown-Séquard-like Deficits
Contributing author on a Journal of Neuroscience paper characterizing sensory deficits in a lateral spinal cord hemisection mouse model.
Joseph Sandoval
UHCL · UTMB
Kinesiology student at UHCL. Spinal cord injury & locomotion research in the Chen Lab at UTMB.
About
I am an undergraduate kinesiology student at the University of Houston-Clear Lake (UHCL). I am also deeply involved in neuroscience and spinal cord injury research at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), where I work in the Chen Lab on locomotion and recovery.
At UTMB, I designed and built the hardware and software for the lab's markerless gait analysis setup. I write the acquisition, pose-estimation, and analysis code, and I handle the behavioral experiments — surgeries, testing, and long-term tracking.
PythonMATLABPyTorchTensorFlowMLXEnglish & Spanish
Current Work
- Markerless pose estimation for joint tracking and limb coordination after spinal cord injury in mice.
- Validating gait metrics (stride symmetry, swing timing) as longitudinal recovery endpoints.
- Deep learning classifiers for spontaneous pain detection from pose data.
Featured Award
Overall Best SCI Poster
November 2025 · Mission Connect 2025
Recognized with the overall Best Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) poster award at Mission Connect 2025.
View all awards →Latest Updates
AwardNovember 2025
Mission Connect 2025: Overall Best SCI Poster
Won Overall Best SCI Poster; covered by the TIRR Foundation recap of the Dr. Robert G. Grossman Mission Connect Neurotrauma Symposium.
AwardAugust 2024
Craig H. Neilsen Foundation Research Support
Received funding through the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation to support my work in the Chen Lab.
TalkNovember 2025
Mission Connect 2025 Poster Presentations
Presented conference posters on SCI locomotion decoding and deep learning-based behavioral fingerprinting for spontaneous pain detection.