{"id":74842,"date":"2019-05-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/commencement-2019-west-warwick-resident-chosen-to-give-student-address-at-uris-graduate-commencement\/"},"modified":"2019-05-15T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T00:00:00","slug":"commencement-2019-west-warwick-resident-chosen-to-give-student-address-at-uris-graduate-commencement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2019\/05\/commencement-2019-west-warwick-resident-chosen-to-give-student-address-at-uris-graduate-commencement\/","title":{"rendered":"Commencement 2019: West Warwick resident chosen to give student address at 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Graduate Commencement"},"content":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. — May 15, 2019 — West Warwick <\/strong>resident Nick Constant remembers his lackluster performances in elementary school spelling bees and being the butt of jokes for not being very smart. He also remembers a difficult start as an undergraduate at the 溏心vlog免费B站.<\/p>\n

But those challenges have not deterred him. Constant, who will earn a doctoral degree in electrical engineering from 溏心vlog免费B站 in 2021, will be in the spotlight as the student speaker for the Graduate Commencement Ceremony, Saturday, May 18 at 12:30 p.m. at the Ryan Center, 1 Lincoln Almond Plaza.<\/p>\n

He was selected for the honor because he serves as the president of the Graduate Student Association, but also because he is a respected biomedical research engineer, an entrepreneur and engaged citizen who wants to help people and communities become healthier and stronger.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never given a speech in front of such a large group,\u201d said Constant, who earned his bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees from 溏心vlog免费B站 in electrical engineering. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a great experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Constant said it was the Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering and one professor who helped shape him at 溏心vlog免费B站.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy senior year capstone project led to the biggest change in me,\u201d Constant said. \u201cI selected a project involving the development of pulse glasses — wearable technology that can monitor heart rates. I was selected to work with (Assistant) Professor Kunal Mankodiya.\u201d<\/p>\n

His team\u2019s impressive work led to a presentation at the 2015 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers International Conference on Body Sensor Networks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also won the Best Design Award at the conference hackathon, and recently, Microsoft adopted the pulse glasses.<\/p>\n

In addition, Constant said Mankodiya, was so happy with the team\u2019s work that he offered its members graduate assistantships. \u201cOf course, I accepted,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Throughout his master\u2019s program and now on his doctorate, Constant has been working with Mankodiya on wearable technology, such as smart textiles, and fog computing to foster more localized and efficient data gathering and analysis to help people with movement disorders.<\/p>\n

He contributed to a book chapter on \u201cWearable E-Textiles for Telemedicine Intervention of Movement Disorders\u201d for the Elsevier Book of Wearable Technology for Medicine and a chapter on \u201cFog Computing in Medical Internet-of-Things,\u201d to the Handbook of Large-Scale Distributed Computing in Smart Health Care, which were both published in 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea behind fog computing is that you take data from technology like voice recognition and you keep it closer to home, and then there is less chance of it being intercepted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worked on this in nursing homes, and the idea is to make it more secure. This has been more efficient than processing data through a major corporate server,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He has also been working in the lab with Andrea Hopkins, \u201868, a former assistant vice president of public affairs at 溏心vlog免费B站, on the assistive technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe has been a blast to work with,\u201d said Constant, who has been involved in numerous outreach activities for schoolchildren and the lead organizer of five very successful hackathons at 溏心vlog免费B站, including those on health, water and the Internet-of-Things.<\/p>\n

\u201cAndrea comes to the lab to test our smart gloves and insoles. She is excited to be involved in activities that could lead to quality of life improvements for those with Parkinson\u2019s disease. And her enthusiasm rubs off on all of us,\u201d Constant said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNick has a genuine smile, ready to greet you as he then\u00a0explains the objectives and progress to date on his projects,\u201d Hopkins said. \u201cI\u2019ve been fortunate to work with Nick on some of his ideas related to helping people, like me, who have Parkinson\u2019s disease. \u00a0I am amazed at the thoughtfulness and empathy he uses to design and build sensors that can actually help my doctor to remotely assess my status, or help me do everyday tasks.\u00a0\u00a0I am inspired whenever I get a call to come into the lab to work with Nick where his skill, knowledge and imagination are working to improve my quality of life.\u00a0\u00a0It is fun, too, to see a concept grow into reality, a feat which Nick has accomplished. I have a feeling that someday, I\u2019ll say \u2018I knew Nick Constant when.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

And if he hasn\u2019t been busy enough, Constant has also founded his own Rhode Island company, ECHOWEAR LLC, to translate his research for use in commercial products.<\/p>\n

Through all of these exciting steps in his life, Constant is deeply grateful to Mankodiya for his support.<\/p>\n

\u201cI expect that we will be lifelong friends,\u201d Constant said. \u201cHe pushes me out of my comfort zone, and he also knows how to help me back off when I am working with others. I also talk with him about my personal life, and he tells me stories from his life that help me out. He doesn\u2019t just tell me what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. — May 15, 2019 — West Warwick resident Nick Constant remembers his lackluster performances in elementary school spelling bees and being the butt of jokes for not being very smart. He also remembers a difficult start as an undergraduate at the 溏心vlog免费B站. But those challenges have not deterred him. Constant, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74843,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-74842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-engineering"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}