In the midst of a blistering heat wave, most Torontonians aren’t thinking much about frigid temperatures, ice and winter spills. But in a special laboratory at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, walking is a perilous — and chilly — experience for volunteers like Varun Ohri.

A 20-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., Ohri is walking for science. Or falling for science, if his supervisor, Jennifer Hsu (MIE, IBBME) is lucky. Ms. Hsu is a biomedical engineer and PhD candidate who specializes in gait biomechanics. She is currently working on a project at this University of Toronto-affiliated hospital that is designed to tease out the hows and whys of winter falls, and most particularly whether they can be avoided.

Ms. Hsu is doing the work for Canada Post, with a grant from Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. “Canada Post really wants to be able to protect their employees. So one of the problems that they know exists is that a lot of people slip and fall,” she says. “So they want to sort of nip it in the bud.”