Vinzenz von Tscharner was born in Switzerland 1947. He received his diploma in applied physics and mathematics 1974 and his PhD degree in biophysics at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He was a post doctorate fellow at Oxford University, Dep. Biochemistry, England in 1978 and 1979, and a post doctorate fellow at Stanford University, California USA Dep. Biochemistry. He returned to the Biocenter in Basel 1981. He was then research affiliate at the Theodor Kocher Institute in Bern and specialized in signal transduction studying cellular responses related to cytokin binding. He became Adj. Assistant Professor (1997) and Adj. Associate Professor (2000) at the Human Performance Laboratory, University of Calgary. His main field of research is the signal propagation controlling movement patterns of humans. This involves biophysical/biomedical measurements and the analysis of sensory systems. The current research projects include the development of wavelet based filtering methods for time series such as electromyographic signals recorded from muscles or acceleration signals from body vibrations. Pattern recognition methods are currently adapted to recognize features of movements in human motion and to correlate these features with kinematic data.

Daniel Lieberman is Chair and Professor of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, where is also a member of Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. He was educated at Harvard (AB ‘86, PhD ’93) and Cambridge (M.Phil. ’97). His research is on how and why the human body is the way it is, with particular foci on the origins of bipedalism, how humans became endurance runners, and on the evolution, development and function of the head in humans. To address these questions he combines experimental biomechanics and physiology, paleontology, and comparative anatomy. He teaches a variety of courses on human evolution, anatomy, and physiology. He has published nearly 100 scientific papers, and recently authored the book, The Evolution of the Human Head.

Leah R. Bent is an Associate Professor in the department on Human Health and Nutritional Sciences. She began her scientific studies at the University of Guelph where she completed her Bachelor of Science (1996) and Master of Science (1998) Degrees. She continued on at the University of British Columbia for her Ph.D. (2002) followed by a three year post-doctoral position at the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute in Sydney Australia (2002-2005) where she was an NSERC (Natural sciences and engineering research council) funded senior research officer. She began her current position in June 2005. Her field of research is poised to understand the role of sensory receptors in balance and locomotion. More specifically she is invested in examining the contributions of the vestibular system and the skin in the modulation of lower limb muscle activity. To investigate these questions she uses a technique called microneurography. This tool enables direct recordings from afferent and efferent nerve fibres in awake humans. The long term objective of the work is to identify key sensory interactions in the spinal cord that facilitate balance and locomotion. During her career she has received funding through NSERC and the Canadian Space Agency to uncover the cutaneous and vestibular sensory contributions to human movement.