SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD
ABME's Scientific Advisory Board comprises external experts in scientific fields that are pertinent to Body Mapping, such as voice, biomechanics, and hearing. They serve to consult with members on research and educational questions that occur in the development of our projects and materials.
RICHARD NICHOLS
Richard Nichols received his PhD in Physiology from Harvard Medical School. His long-standing research interest has been the manner in which sensory information from muscles is utilized in the spinal cord to control the motions of our limbs. His current projects include the development of an exercise protocol that normalizes the organization of spinal pathways and improves motor function after spinal cord injury. He has been associated with ABME for many years serving in an advisory capacity concerning the scientific underpinnings of body mapping.
CHRISTINE GUPTILL
Dr. Christine Guptill is Assistant Professor in Occupational Therapy at the University of Ottawa. Her program of research focuses on musicians’ health from a work disability prevention perspective. Christine designed and taught Health and Music Performance, the only university credit course to address musicians' health in Canada. She is currently Vice Chair of Research for the Performing Arts Medicine Association. She was a founding member of the Health Advisory Team at National Youth Orchestra Canada (NYOC). In 2012, she was honoured to receive a Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in recognition of her work at NYOC. In her spare time, Christine performs as a freelance oboist.
KRIS CHESKY
Kris Chesky is Professor at UNT College of Music and is co-director of the Texas Center for Performing Arts Health. He is a leading researcher and educator in performing arts medicine. Chesky earned a BM in trumpet from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and his graduate degrees at the University of North Texas. Chesky headed the Health Promotion in Schools of Music project (www.unt.edu/hpsm). He established an award-winning undergraduate occupational health curriculum at UNT, as well as curricular opportunities in performing arts medicine for graduate students . Teaching is central to his interests, and a number of his students have authored peer-reviewed research articles and hold academic positions in various universities around the world.
AARON WILLIAMON
Aaron Williamon is Professor of Performance Science at the Royal College of Music, where he directs the Centre for Performance Science. His research focuses on skilled performance and applied scientific initiatives that inform music learning and teaching, as well as the impact of music and the arts on society. Aaron is founder of the International Symposium on Performance Science, chief editor of Performance Science (a Frontiers journal), and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the UK’s Higher Education Academy. In 2008, he was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal College of Music.
BRONWEN ACKERMANN
Bronwen Ackermann is a physiotherapist whose interest in performing arts health grew as a result of her ongoing work with the musicians of Australasia’s leading symphony orchestras. Her clinical and research work focuses on understanding better ways to optimise body use during performance and reduce the risk of injury. She has run several large national musicians’ health projects including an ARC linkage grant for development of "Sound Practice." She was the inaugural president of the Australian Society for Performing Arts Healthcare, is the Chair of the International Liaison Committee and the Education Committee of the USA based Performing Arts Medicine Association (PAMA), and Editor-In-Chief of the journal Medical Problems of Performing Artists.
JEFF SEARL
Jeff Searl is an Associate Professor in the Michigan State University Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders. He received his Ph.D from the University of Kansas and served for more than a decade as full-time faculty in the Hearing and Speech Department at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC). His research interests include understanding the forces involved in speech sound production and how those forces are altered by neurological disease or structural alterations to the articulators. Dr. Searl has a particular focus on the relationships among force generation, perceived effort of the speaker, and associated outcomes for elevated effort including fatigue, acoustic, and perceptual alterations to speech.
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