James Thomas, PT, PhD to keynote virtual EACPHS Research Day Oct. 14
The 17th annual Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences Research Day will be held virtually, with the keynote and student and faculty awards presented live on Zoom on Wednesday, Oct. 14.
This year, abstracts and digital versions of posters will be submitted simultaneously with a deadline of Wednesday, Sept. 16. The abstract/poster submission and faculty award nomination processes will open on Aug. 15, and details will be announced soon – so stay tuned!
Keynote speaker James Thomas, PT, PhD
A professor of physical therapy at Virginia Commonwealth University, James Thomas's primary research focus is on how the central nervous system controls patterns of movement in a kinematically redundant system in healthy individuals and in those individuals with orthopedic or neurological impairments.
He earned his B.S. in Physical Therapy at St. Louis University and his Ph.D. in Kinesiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After 12 years of clinical experience in orthopedics, he joined Ohio University to teach and initiated the Ohio Musculoskeletal and Neurologic research Institute. He brings an innovative virtual reality research initiative to VCU. The Motor Control Lab (MCL), under the direction of Thomas, has been funded by the NIH since 2004. The primary focus of the MCL is to better understand control of trunk movements and how various orthopedic or neurologic impairments alter that control. He uses state of the art technology, equipment, facilities, and strong research methods to investigate back pain. In addition to offering a creative option to physical therapy treatment in the DPT program, he adds a new dimension to the Ph.D. in Rehabilitation and Movement Science.
