PhD Student, Graduate Program in Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health, Virginia Tech
Noor Tasnim graduated from Duke University in 2018 with dual-honors in Evolutionary Anthropology and Global Health. At Duke, he was a visual arts instructor for Arts for Life North Carolina and member of a hip-hop inspired collegiate dance team. His involvement in dance helped shape an interest in barefoot locomotion and lower limb injuries. In 2017, he examined differences in foot shape between men and women in Mandena, Madagascar and showed that orthopedic problems, already well documented in the West, were a global phenomenon reaching even remote agrarian communities. In 2020, he was selected as a Luce Scholar and spent a year studying human biomechanics at Ewha Womans University (South Korea) and The University of Tokyo (Japan). He also spent this time training in various styles of dance, specializing in Popping and Animation. As a member of the Embodied Brain Lab at Virginia Tech (PI: Dr. Julia Basso), he connects his research interests in human biomechanics, cognition, and neurophysiology with his passion for dance to improve socio-emotional and musculoskeletal health.