Faculty & Staff
Featured Faculty
KIN Faculty & Staff
Faculty research productivity and income from grants continued to increase over the last ten years. Each of the School’s graduate faculty members has a sustained record of research published in scholarly journals with much of this research supported through competition for research grants. This funding has, in turn, supported many of the School’s graduate students. Graduate students have been increasingly successful in national and university scholarship competitions. Graduate faculty are experienced in the supervision of theses and dissertations at both the Master and Doctoral degree levels and they are often sought after to act as external examiners and committee members in other faculties here and elsewhere. Associate status within other UBC faculties, departments, and research institutes (e.g., Science, Rehabilitation Sciences, Psychology, ICORD, and Brain Research Center) is not uncommon and further promotes interdisciplinary activity. Faculty also have a number of research collaborations with other North American and international universities.
Featured Research
This month, we are celebrating the research activites of Dr. Mark Carpenter CRC chair in the School. The first objective of my research is to identify the neural, musculo-skeletal and psychological factors that contribute to balance deficits and falls associated with age, Parkinson’s disease, vestibular loss and spinal cord injury. The second objective is to identify optimal exercise, training and treatment strategies to improve age and disease-specific balance deficits and reduce the occurrence and impact of falls. The Neural Control of Posture and Movement Laboratory features a comprehensive approach to studying dynamic control of balance by combining various neuro-physiological and biomechanical techniques, including surface and intra-muscular electromyography, 3D full-body motion analysis and force measurement coupled with quantitative and qualitative assessment of perceived and physiological effects of fear and anxiety. Virtual reality will be used to manipulate balance-related anxiety and recreate the environmental conditions that lead to falls in everyday life. Virtual environments will be integrated with a unique moving balance platform capable of producing unexpected multi-directional balance disturbances.
