Marcel Oliart

overview

Marcel Oliart is a current first year Bioengineering PhD Student at the University of Pittsburgh. He is working under Dr. Alicia Koontz at the Human Engineering Research Laboratory. He initially obtained his BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2022. He was then admitted to the dual-degree DPT-PhD Program at the University of Pittsburgh, a program designed to create outstanding clinician-researchers in the field of Bioengineering. He graduated from the DPT Program in 2024 and began his PhD studies in the spring of 2025.
Throughout his undergraduate engineering studies, Marcel worked as an undergraduate researcher for 3 years at the Human Movement and Balance Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh, where he worked with professors such as Dr. Mark Redfern and Dr. April Chambers on various studies to investigate gait and balance conditions. Throughout his DPT studies, he completed a series of clinical experiences as a part of the DPT program, which involved working full time in various clinical settings for weeks at a time. This included a total of 36 weeks in outpatient orthopedic and neurologic settings, and a 6-week experience in an inpatient rehabilitation setting for spinal cord injury patients. Throughout these clinical experiences, particularly in the rehab setting, Marcel was inspired by the areas of assistive technology and rehabilitation technology and decided to pursue these topics in his graduate research.