Keynote Lecture
Prof.ssa ALICE NIEUWBOER
Alice Nieuwboer has been a full professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences at KU Leuven (Belgium). Since October 2023, she has been its professor emeritus. With a clinical background as a physiotherapist, she established a research laboratory for rehabilitation in Parkinson's disease (PRO-lab); with her team she contributed to the study of gait and motor control, analyzing which deficits underlie the phenomenon of freezing of gait. He has performed several clinical trials on the effects of rehabilitation interventions. In collaboration with international partners, he is investigating whether digital mobility outcomes derived from walking in real-life conditions can measure freezing and whether it can be reduced with the use of cues and split-belt treatments.
Prof. DANIEL E. LIEBERMAN
Daniel Lieberman is the Edwin M. Lerner II of Biological Sciences and Chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University.
He holds degrees from Harvard University and the University of Cambridge. He taught at Rutgers University and George Washington University before joining the Harvard faculty in 2001.
He studies and teaches how and why the human body is the way it is and how our evolutionary history affects the state of health and disease. He is best known for his research on the evolution of the skull and the evolution of running and walking, which he analyzes by combining experimental biomechanics, anatomy and physiology both in the laboratory and in the field. He has conducted research by traveling in person to Kenya, Rwanda and Mexico. He loves teaching and has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, many in journals such as Nature, Science and PNAS, as well as three popular books, The Evolution of the Human Head (2011), The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease (2013), Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding (2021). In his spare time, he loves to run.
Prof. DERICK WADE
Visiting Professor at Oxford Brookes University.
Professor Derick Wade has been a consultant in neurological rehabilitation since 2007.
He is a professor and consultant (as a senior physician) in Neurological Rehabilitation at Oxford. He has been practicing and researching in the field of rehabilitation since 1980. He has published more than 300 papers on different aspects of rehabilitation, from basic clinical phenomena such as visual-spatial neglect to trials on different service delivery modalities. He is still clinically active in teaching, writing and managing research projects, runs the Rehabilitation Matters website and has been editor of the scientific journal Clinical Rehabilitation for more than 25 years. He is particularly interested in finding out what rehabilitation is and has recently published a "General Theory of Rehabilitation," the first theory to be conceived in which he links the biopsychosocial model of disease and the multiprofessional team approach to the adjustment process.
Prof. MARCO SCHIEPPATI
He has taught Human Physiology and Neurophysiology at the Universities of Milan, Genoa and Pavia since 1980.
He received his medical degree from the University of Milan and then specialized in Neurology at the University of Pavia.
His career has developed through a constant commitment to teaching and a deep dedication to scientific research. He has also expanded his academic experience beyond national borders, in the role of professor at the University of Dijon (FR), d'Orsay (FR) and LUNEX (LU). He has been a member of more than 30 international doctoral dissertation committees, as well as a reviewer of research projects of national and international calls. He has been a member of several Editorial Boards for prestigious journals in the clinical field, continuing his research activity in human movement, from the understanding of its pathophysiological mechanisms to the study of motor control, pathology-induced alterations and new rehabilitation possibilities. He recently founded the company Prevent SRL to design, build and market a medical device (Step-Turn) to prevent falls, rehabilitate walking after osteosynthesis surgeries and train directional changes. His activities result in more than 200 scientific publications that place him in the Top Italian Scientist in Biomedical Sciences ranking. He was also included in PLOS Biology's 2021 ranking of Top Scientists worldwide.
Prof.ssa MAURA CASADIO
She is an associate professor in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Genoa.
She received his M.S. degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Pisa in 2002, his M.S. degree in Bioengineering in 2007 and his Ph.D. degree in Robotics, Materials Science and Bioengineering in 2006 from the University of Genoa.
During 2006-2007, she worked as an engineer-researcher at the Don Gnocchi Foundation. From 2008 to 2011 she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Physiology, Northwestern University, and the Robotics Laboratory, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA. Her main research interests are in neural control of movement, neuromotor rehabilitation, development of novel devices and body-machine interfaces for functional assessment, assistance and rehabilitation.
