COMING SOONLaboratory for Testing and Medical Research
Test, research, develop, and improve products to make them better, safer, and more accessible.
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“My father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2014. He was only 48 years old. He had a private business, a loving wife, three children in post-graduate studies, and many plans for the future. Parkinson’s disease changed everything, not only for my father, but also for his family—for me. We knew something was wrong. My father was not the same man that he was before. He could not relate to us through his face, neither communicating his own emotions, nor conveying his empathy for others. My mother even considered divorce, no longer able to connect with the person she had married.
But I suggested that perhaps it was a neurological problem? And together with us, my father visited a neurology clinic in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. After many tests across many weeks, however, the diagnosis remained uncertain. Finally, a promising young doctor offered a potential novel diagnostic. She asked our family to collect together photographs of my father and his smile from over the years. The doctor then compared my father’s smiles both past and present, observing how the expressivity of this behavior decreased over time. On the basis of face, therefore, my father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at its earliest onset. He was able to get treatment. My family stayed together, with my mother even becoming an integral part of care support. And today, some ten years later, my father is hiking among the mountains and playing with his first grandchild.”
Ľudmila Lacková Bennett, Mgr, PhD, and PhD
MSCA-SE MASKED Project Coordinator
Ľudmila Lacková Bennett, Mgr, PhD, and PhD
Communication Theorist, Linguist, and Semiotician
Routine and stat testing, special biochemical tests, metabolic tests, drug-level monitoring.
Brian Khumalo, MSocSci
Anthropologist and Biosemiotician
Bacteriological, mycological, and special parasitrological analysis.
Devon Schiller, BFA, MA
Biological, Cognitive, and Medical Semiotician
His scholarship centers around the pragmatist semioethics of behavioral science. In particular, he focuses on dynamic human facial behavior, its modelling, and measurement in the equipped cognition of our epistemic practices across contemporary and historical psychology.