Andrew Nordin
By Alex Keimig
Assistant professor of biomedical engineering Andrew Nordin first started his lab in kinesiology at Texas A&M University, but felt increasingly drawn to the Cullen College of Engineering’s biomedical engineering program and the city of Houston. He joined the Cullen faculty in 2024 and shortly opened his newest biomechanics and neural movement control lab.
Nordin first completed his undergraduate degree in physics while competing as a track athlete, and he was interested in finding applications for his studies to human movement. He later earned a second undergraduate degree, a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in kinesiology with a concentration in biomechanics.
“I became interested in neural control of movement and neuroscience, which led to my postdoctoral research in human neuromechanics and developing EEG methods for recording electrical brain activity during walking and running. This opened many research applications in multi-sensory processing during gait, including visual processing, bodyweight unloading and virtual reality,” he said.
“The ceiling is very high for conducting research within the department, university and broader community, given the proximity to the many labs and researchers throughout the city and the Texas Medical Center,” he continued. “[UH] students and faculty have been very welcoming and encouraging, with tremendous opportunities for collaboration and growth. It’s been an exciting process to find students and collaborators to work with.”
Nordin has found students to be very interested in getting involved in research “at every level, including high school, undergraduate, medical and graduate students. There’s very little need to recruit when so many strong students are actively seeking out opportunities to get involved,” he said.
He aims to encourage critical thinking with his students whenever possible, increasingly moving them toward independence. He finds that “aligning student interests and systematically expanding boundaries of research is fun and makes teaching and mentoring rewarding.”
These expanding boundaries apply even to his own work as artificial intelligence rapidly transforms the disciplines of both education and engineering.
“Adjusting my course delivery style and assessment methods to keep students engaged and actively learning has always been necessary, but changes in how we acquire knowledge, communicate in writing and develop code for solving problems seems to have accelerated more rapidly in the last five years than the previous several decades,” he said. “It’s been interesting to navigate the use of AI as a learning tool and encouraging to observe students finding that AI doesn’t replace critical thinking.”
Still, Nordin believes that continuing to push existing lines of research forward and exploring new areas of interest is what keeps science itself interesting, both for learners and for researchers like himself.
“It’s encouraging to know that we are making exciting short-term advancements, but it’s fun to consider that some of the next steps are unknown,” Nordin said. “Not knowing what we don’t know about the future leaves great room for exploration and growth.”