Zikra Nilam is a fourth year Bachelor of Human Kinetics student who has surpassed all expectations, including her own, through her Outstanding Scholars career. Zikra began working with Dr. David Andrews in her second year on a biomechanics project investigating the reliability of manually segmented DXA scan measurements. Through this project, several segment tissue mass prediction equations for living people were generated for lean mass, fat mass, wobbling mass and bone mineral content. This work is currently being prepared for submission to a peer reviewed journal. Zikra has presented her contributions to this research at the UWill Discover Conference in 2018 and the Ontario Biomechanics Conference in 2017 and 2018. Her current work as an Outstanding Scholar with Dr. Andrews is focused on the development of a mobile application for segment tissue mass estimation for healthy younger and older men and women. She is currently in the development phase and is designing the user interface of the app.
Zikra explained, "I wanted to do something that would benefit society and be impactful. I can do this within biomechanics-the work I am doing is directly related to the human body and health. I had a goal of getting published and presenting at a conference and I am well on my way to accomplishing both of those things. Now I can set my goals higher. Most people believe that, as an undergrad student, doing this is impossible-but it's not. If you have the motivation, you make use of the resources available to you and you WORK, you can do anything you set your mind to." Zikra hopes to release the first version of the application before she graduates in the Spring. When asked "what's next?", Zikra told us that she is getting her masters degree in physiotherapy and may continue on to a PhD afterwards.