School of Kinesiology professor of motor learning and motor development, Michael Wade, PhD, has been appointed to the Scientific Committee of the 21st International Conference on Perception and Action.
The event will take place on July 26-30 2020, in Cincinnati, Oh.
Dr. Belmar Gunderson, a former faculty member in the School of Kinesiology and often referred to as “the mother of Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics at the University of Minnesota,” will be receiving the prestigious 2020 Legacy Award at the 34th Annual Minnesota National Girls and Women in Sports Day on February 5, 2020, at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul.
Dr. Gunderson came to the U of M in 1962 as a faculty member and coach in the Department of Physical Education for Women (now the School of Kinesiology) and in 1975 became the first Director of Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics, before the men’s and women’s programs merged.
While teaching in the Department of Physical Education for Women at the U of M, Dr. Gunderson also served as the coordinator for the Women’s Intramural – Extramural Sports Program (previously the Women’s Intramural Program) and coached tennis, basketball, badminton, and field hockey. There were very limited opportunities for female athletes in this pre-Title IX era and Dr. Gunderson recalls that at the time the budget for women’s sports clubs was “$5.76.” In 1971, the first year the U of M funded women’s sports programs, the budget was raised to $5,000—the same amount held in the shoe budget for the football coaches. Thanks to Dr. Gunderson’s advocacy, that budget increased to $10,000 during the 1972–73 academic year. When Gunderson left the U of M in 1979 the women’s intercollegiate athletics budget had grown to $330,000.
Dr. Gunderson is credited with initiating 10 women’s varsity sports during her 17-year tenure and hiring the legendary Jean Freeman as the U of M’s Women’s Swimming and Diving Head Coach. Among her many accomplishments, in 1975 Dr. Gunderson and former School of Kinesiology Director Dr. Eloise Jaeger, initiated the Patty Berg Fund – the first scholarship in women’s athletics. Over her career, Gunderson served on many educational and sports committees for the American Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD), the United States Tennis Association (USTA), the Division of Girls and Women’s Sports (DGWS) and later the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW).
Before arriving in Minnesota, Dr. Gunderson received her undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1956 and her master’s degree from Penn State in 1962. While teaching at the U of M Gunderson earned her doctorate from Texas Woman’s University in 1971. Gunderson was a top-ranked tennis player in the U.S., reaching a No. 11 ranking in singles and competing at Wimbledon four times and in the U.S. Nationals for 10 years. She won the Canadian Doubles Championship, and singles and doubles championships at the Swedish Championship and the Frankfurt International Championship. In 1961, Dr. Gunderson defeated Wimbledon champion Maria Bueno at the Orange Lawn Tennis Championships. Since that time, Gunderson has won USTA national titles in the 55, 60, 65 and 70 age groups, and eight International Tennis Federation (ITF) World Doubles titles. She has been inducted into the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, University of Minnesota, Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) and USTA Northern Section halls of fame. In 2011 Dr. Gunderson received the USTA’s Service Bowl Award, an award also given to Billie Jean King and Chris Evert.
Dr. Gunderson is a current resident of River Falls, WI, where she raises horses. She winters in Florida where she continues to play competitive tennis.
The 34th Annual Minnesota National Girls and Women in Sports Day is free and open to the public, we invite you to attend and see Dr. Gunderson receive her Legacy Award.
School of Kinesiology professor, and director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory, Thomas Stoffregen PhD, has been appointed to the Scientific Committee of the 21st International Conference on Perception and Action.
The event will take place on July 26-30 2020, in Cincinnati, Oh.
School of Kinesiology professor, and director of the Human Sensorimotor Control Lab (HSCL), Jürgen Konczak, PhD, is the senior author of a recent article published in the journal Neurology, one of the most highly cited peer-reviewed journals in neurology.
The article, “Tactile and proprioceptive dysfunction differentiates cervical dystonia with and without tremor,” reports on research about cervical dystonia (CD), a neurological disease that induces unwanted muscle spasms in the neck muscles and leads to abnormal head postures. There is currently no cure for this disease. The objective of the study was to determine whether the different types of CD (those with a tremor and those without) express different types and levels of somatosensory impairment.
An interdisciplinary research team consisting of neurologists and physical therapists from the University of Genoa and engineering colleagues from the Italian Institute of Technology used motion capture and robotic technology to determine deficits in tactile sensing and the patients’ ability to sense body position and motion (proprioception). They found that only patients with head tremor show an altered perception of head posture. This finding provides a new insight into the disease mechanism, which, may ultimately help to tailor new treatments for each subtype of CD by addressing their individual differences in the underlying disease mechanism.
Zan Gao, Ph.D., Kinesiology Associate Professor and Director of the Physical Activity Epidemiology Laboratory (PAEL), has co-authored a research article titled “Associations between Daily Step Counts and Physical Fitness in Preschool Children” in the Journal of Clinical Medicine.
Gao worked with a group of researchers from Shanghai University of Sports. In this project, they investigated the relationships between daily step counts and health-related physical fitness in preschool children from Shanghai, China. Their findings suggest positive relationships between daily step counts and physical fitness in preschool children. The correlation was strongest for young boys who accumulated 8000 steps/day.
Read more about the project here:https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/9/1/163
This is the story of an amazing young woman who used her love of sport, intelligence, and fierce determination to show young girls that anything is possible, and that dreams can come true.
In just a few short years, Muna Mohamed received her master’s in kinesiology, started her own business, and was recently recognized by three influential organizations on local and international levels. She was one of four student finalists in the MN Cup competition, which awards emerging entrepreneurs with support for building a business plan and expanding their networks. As one of only fifty accepted applicants from around the world, she was chosen to attend the Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Innovators, an international conference that brings together rising talents in the creative sector to drive social, economic and urban change. And she was selected as a Women’s Foundation of Minnesota Innovator, receiving a $2,500 grant which she will use to create a photography exhibit to tell the stories of young women and girls in sport.
This is how her journey started.
In 2013, Mohamed was an undergraduate at Augsburg College, studying exercise science and committing her spare time to the East African community in Minneapolis’ Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. “I wanted to work with young girls at the community center, where there were opportunities to play sports, particularly basketball,” she says. “I was an athlete myself, but I looked different. Where other girls were playing sports wearing traditional sports uniforms, I observed modest clothing practices of Muslims that did not align with the current sports uniforms provided by the schools. This posed a challenge.” At the community center, she met Dr. Chelsey Thul, lecturer in the School of Kinesiology, and her colleagues, who were working with mothers, grandmothers, and young girls in the community, teaching about nutrition and physical activity. Thul was conducting research at that time to understand physical activity levels through the voices of East African immigrant adolescent girls. Mohamed and Thul made an instant connection, and that was a turning point for Mohamed. She became a community partner in Thul’s research.
Thul, colleagues, and community partners received a grant to work with girls who attended the community center, teaching them to design culturally relevant fitness attire that would allow them to play sports with less restrictions.
“I was inspired by working with young girls and adolescents,” says Mohamed. “I could put my artistic skills to work designing and creating fitness wear—I’d make a sketch and then figure out how to create it. And, I saw this work give East African girls an opportunity to be physically active.” This project was a collaboration between the School of Kinesiology, the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, the College of Design, community members and the youth advisory council at the Cedar-Riverside community center.
Influenced by this, Mohamed began her own research. From her continued work in this area, she started her business, Modest & Active, whose mission is to provide a collection of active apparel for women and girls that adheres to their values. “The company is built on a foundation of developing collaboration with major stakeholders, including youth, community members, and local schools and universities,” says Mohamed.
Mohamed and Jennifer Weber, Minneapolis Indian Education Special Education teacher and co-founder of the Cedar-Riverside Community Traveling Basketball Program, worked with the first girls basketball team that had the option to use either traditional or modest wear for playing sports. “Everyone got to look the same as their teammates and focus on their athletic skills,” says Mohamed. “We actually eliminated the clothing barrier.”
In connecting with Thul and her colleagues, Mohamed realized she was ready to move forward with her education. “I wanted to work with Dr. Thul in the master’s program in the School of Kinesiology because of her love of research and the chance to get women’s voices heard,” she says. “I saw how impactful her work was with East African mothers and their daughters. Research can help create change.” She got her master’s, she says, because of her love of sports and commitment to eliminate barriers that can sometimes prevent young girls from engaging in sport. “My ultimate goal is not just to create sport uniforms, but active wear as a whole for all Muslim women so that regardless of their physical activity or sport, they can be comfortable and confidant when they participate.”
Mohamed is also tuned to the power of people’s stories. She envisions creating a company that can use stories to inspire young people to become involved in physical activity and sports. “We can produce clothing, but there is space here too for producing culturally sensitive programming that will support girls and young women.” She cites Soul Cycle as a model. “My goal is to have my business, and to provide opportunities for community physical activity programming, arts, sports, and telling stories.”
Mohamed credits her mentors and experiences in the Cedar-Riverside community with a large measure of her success. She says that Dr. Thul and Weber gave her opportunities to realize the impact she could make. “I went from playing basketball and being a coach to working with them to provide opportunities for young Muslim girls, and boys too. We were able to expose kids to opportunities that other kids had, and mentor them, and watch them mentor the next generation. It’s beautiful when a young Muslim girl says, ‘I want to be a coach, too.’”
What advice would Mohamed offer to young, aspiring entrepreneurs?
“Network,” she says. “Do research. Information is power. When opportunities don’t come to you, you have to find them.”
She adds, “Pitch your ideas, and watch others pitch theirs. Instead of watching 40 minutes of Netflix, watch 40 minutes of pitches. And don’t be afraid. Follow your dreams and instincts, and things will fall into place. Life has its way of making things right.”
Lisa Kihl, PhD, associate professor of sport management in the School of Kinesiology was interviewed on The Intercollegiate Podcast about (NCAA) Rules and Ethics.
The Intercollegiate is a public-service journalism venture that critically confronts the subject of college sports. In this episode Daniel Libit, a journalist at The Intercollegiate, spoke with Kihl and former NCAA investigator-turned-reformer Tim Nevious about NCAA rules and regulations and the moral reasoning of college sports compliance staffers.
Listen to their discussion here.
Kihl is the director of the Global Institute for Responsible Sport Organizations (GIRSO).
Sarah Greising, PhD and her team of lab members in the Skeletal Muscle Plasticity and Regeneration Laboratory (SMPRL) published one of Cell Death and Discovery’s top articles in 2018-2019. The article, Multiscale analysis of a regenerative therapy for treatment of volumetric muscle loss injury, was originally published in February 2018. Since then it has been accessed 1,619 times and referenced 12 times.
Greising is the director of SMPRL and an assistant professor in exercise physiology in the School of Kinesiology.
Donald R. Dengel, Ph.D., is a co-author of a recently published article “Reaching the tipping point: identification of thresholds at which may steeply increase in youth.” The related study identified sex-specific body fat thresholds at which visceral adipose tissue levels appear to steeply increase in children and adolescents.
Visceral adipose tissue is fat tissue located deep in the abdomen and around internal organs. It is a hormonally active component of total body fat, which possesses unique biochemical characteristics that influence several normal and pathological processes in the human body. Previous available evidence indicates that visceral fat may be an important factor in metabolic conditions such as glucose intolerance, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and insulin resistance.
The article was published in the journal Pediatric Obesity.
Dengel is a professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Laboratory of Integrative Human Physiology. Drs. Aaron Kelly and Tyler Bosch, graduates from the School of Kinesiology were also co-authors on this article.
Thomas J. Smith, PhD, adjunct professor in the School of Kinesiology, has been appointed to the Editorial Board for the journal WORK: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment & Rehabilitation an interdisciplinary, international journal which publishes high quality peer-reviewed manuscripts covering the entire scope of the occupation of work.
Over the past five years the School of Kinesiology’s Human Sensorimotor Control Laboratory (HSCL) has investigated the use of laryngeal vibration as a non-invasive method to treat speech symptoms associated with the voice disorder spasmodic dysphonia (SD). The HSCL team has established the short-term effectiveness of the approach, with about two-thirds of SD patients responding to the treatment.
The lab is currently conducting a clinical trial funded through the National Institute of Deafness and Communication Disorders to examine the effects of applying laryngeal stimulation on patients over a period of 11 weeks. In addition, lab members Arash Mahnan and Jessica Holst-Wolf recently completed a National Science Foundation Innovation Corps program. As part of this program, they visited patient groups, physicians, speech therapists, health care providers and medical device manufacturers throughout the United States to inquire about their needs to move forward the translation of this technology towards possible commercialization. Dr. Jürgen Konczak is the principal investigator of this federally funded research.
Here’s a video update about the process they’ve made thus far:
The School of Kinesiology’s Human Sensorimotor Control Laboratory (HSCL) investigated new damping technology in tennis racquets as a part of a study sponsored by Wilson Sporting Goods.
The study investigated how damping technology reduces unwanted vibrations in tennis racquets. Players of the University of Minnesota varsity tennis team field-tested a novel racquet, while researchers tracked their levels of muscle fatigue and measured the acceleration exerted by tennis balls when they hit the racquet. Analysis showed that acceleration energy, a marker of vibration, is reduced by about 25% at the hand of the player when using a racquet with embedded vibration-damping technology. This racquet is now used by top professional tennis players throughout the world. I-ling Yeh, a former doctoral student in HSCL now at the Singapore Institute of Technology is the first author of the paper.
Sarah M Greising, PhD, assistant professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Skeletal Muscle Plasticity and Regeneration Laboratory (SMPRL), has published an article with colleagues including current Kinesiology MS student Kyle Dalske in Tissue Engineering, Part A.
The paper is titled Pharmacological Mitigation of Fibrosis in a Porcine Model of Volumetric Muscle Loss Injury. It thoroughly evaluated the effect of a clinically available anti-fibrotic therapy on the development of fibrosis after volumetric muscle loss injury in a large animal model. The most salient finding of the study is that the anti-fibrotic nintedanib significantly reduced the development of VML injury-induced fibrous tissue deposition and stiffness.
The full citation is as follows: Corona, B.T., Rivera, J.C., Dalske K.A., Wenke, J.C., & Greising, S. M. (In Press, 2019). Pharmacological Mitigation of Fibrosis in a Porcine Model of Volumetric Muscle Loss Injury. Tissue Engineering, Part A. https://doi.org/10.1089/ten.TEA.2019.0272
Li Li Ji, PhD, spoke at the 9th International Conference of Polyphenol and Health (2019 ICPH) and the International Conference of Function Food (ICoFF) held in Kobe, Japan from November 30 to December 3, 2019. The title of his presentation was “Antioxidant and Anti-inflammatory Function of Oat Avenanthramide.” For more information about his presentation, see his presentation here.
Ji is a professor of exercise physiology in the School of Kinesiology and the director of the Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene and Exercise Science.
On December 7, 2019, Donald R. Dengel, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Laboratory of Integrative Human Physiology, presented at the 2019 Track Football Consortium at Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Illinois. The title of Dr. Dengel’s talk was “Next Generation Body Composition Analytics.”
School of Kinesiology professor Donald R. Dengel, Ph.D., director of the Laboratory of Integrative Human Physiology, presented at the 2019 Sports Biometrics Conference in San Francisco, California on December 5, 2019. Dengel spoke on “Muscle Mass And Muscle Function: More Mass Doesn’t Mean Better Function.”
The Sports Biometrics Conference focuses on specific applications of big data and analytics in sports science.
The School of Kinesiology Physical Activity Epidemiology Laboratory (PAEL) researchers Wenxi Liu, PhD student, Nan Zeng, PhD, Zachary C. Pope, Ph.D., Daniel J. McDonough, PhD student, and Zan Gao, PhD, associate professor and Director of PAEL, have published a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Clinical Medicine. The paper, “Acute Effects of Immersive Virtual Reality Exercise on Young Adults’ Situational Motivation,” examines differences in college students’ situational motivation among immersive VR, non-immersive VR, and traditional stationary cycling sessions.
Their findings suggest immersive VR exercise has the potential to be an attractive exercise alternative, possibly promoting greater physical activity engagement and adherence among young adults.
Chris Curry, School of Kinesiology doctoral candidate and member of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory, gave a guest lecture in Computer Science & Engineering course 5619: Virtual Reality (VR) and 3D Interaction.
The goal of this course is to provide a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the art in virtual reality technologies and user interfaces. Curry presented on cybersickness related to VR devices and how the current VR devices are manufactured in a way that causes significantly more cybersickness in female wearers than male.
Here is the full slide deck.
Zan Gao, PhD, School of Kinesiology associate professor and director of Physical Activity Epidemiology Laboratory, is the first author on an editorial paper titled “Emerging technology in promoting physical activity and health: Challenges and opportunities” published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine.
Offering a logical and clear critique of emerging technologies in physical activity and health promotion, the editorial paper provides useful suggestions and practical implications for researchers, practitioners, and educators in the fields of public health, kinesiology, physical activity and health, and healthcare.
Read more here: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/8/11/1830/htm
On November 15, 2019, Michael G. Wade, PhD, Kinesiology professor of movement science, delivered the 14th Annual Geraldine Pellechia Memorial Lecture. The invited address was given to the Department of Psychology at the University of Connecticut, and titled “The Cause of Developmental Coordination Disorder; A Case of Degraded Perception-Action Coupling.”
