Skip links

My Account

Our Board

Board of Directors

Jasper Schipperijn
PRESIDENT
Jasper Schipperijn is a Professor in Active Living Environments with the Research Unit for Active Living at the University of Southern Denmark. His research interests revolve around two main topics 1…
View Bio
Karen Milton
PRESIDENT ELECT
Karen is an Associate Professor in Public Health within the Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia (UK). She held previous positions in physical activity and public health…
View Bio
Catherine Draper
PAST PRESIDENT
Catherine Draper is an Associate Professor in the MRC/Wits Developmental Pathways for Health Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, and is also affiliated to the Division of…
View Bio
Lisa Cadmus-Bertram
TREASURER
Lisa Cadmus-Bertram is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Wisconsin – Madison (USA). She earned her Ph.D. in Epidemiology and Psychology at Yale…
View Bio
Gemma Ryde
VICE-TREASURER
Gemma is a Lecturer in Physical Activity within the Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport at the University of Stirling in Scotland. Her research focuses on physical activity and health in the…
View Bio
Matthew McLaughlin
COMMUNICATIONS
Matthew Mclaughlin (Tepi) is a PhD Student at the University of Newcastle, a Research Assistant at Hunter New England Population Health, the Chair of the ISPAH Early Career Network. Tepi also holds…
View Bio
Anna Chalkley
COUNCILS
Anna is a Senior Research Associate at Loughborough University and a physical activity and public health ‘pracademic’, supporting the translation, dissemination and implementation of…
View Bio
Lindsey Reece
ADVOCACY
Lindsey has extensive experience in applied research and evaluation, specialising in Physical Activity, Sport and Public Health. Within her current role as Research Fellow at the University of Sydney’s…
View Bio
Jacqueline Mair
GOVERNANCE
Dr Jacqueline Mair is a Senior Scientist with the Singapore-ETH Centre. Jacqueline’s research focusses on ways to increase physical activity and reduce sedentary behaviour using digital…
View Bio
Elroy Aguiar
IT SYSTEMS
Dr. Aguiar’s research is focused on step-based measurement of physical activity, with a specific emphasis on quantifying the dose-response relationships between step-based…
View Bio
Candice Christie
EDUCATION
Professor Candice Christie is an associate professor in the Department of Human Kinetics and Ergonomics, Rhodes University, South Africa. The focus of Candice’s physical activity research is the…
View Bio
Andrea Ramirez Varela
MEMBERSHIP
Andrea Ramírez Varela obtained her MD and MPH degrees from Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá Colombia in 2010 and 2014. Since 2014, she is the coordinator of the Global…
View Bio
Gabreilla McLoughlin
EARLY CAREER NETWORK
Gabriella is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Prevention Research Center and Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University in St. Louis P50 center program. Gabriella received…
View Bio
Jade Morris
SECRETARIAT
Jade is a physical activity and childhood health researcher. Jade has just finished her PhD within the Centre of Active Lifestyles Research group at Leeds Beckett University. Jade’s thesis…
View Bio
Jasper Schipperijn
PRESIDENT
Jasper Schipperijn is a Professor in Active Living Environments with the Research Unit for Active Living at the University of Southern Denmark. His research interests revolve around two main topics 1) conducting multi-disciplinary intervention studies to create active living environments and 2) developing tools and methods that make it possible to use GPS, accelerometers and GIS data to measure active living and the environment it takes place in.

Jasper has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and numerous reports and popular publications. Jasper has an extensive international network with ongoing collaborations with various international partners, in particular in Australia (the Telethon Kids Institute, RMIT University, Deakin University) and New Zealand (Auckland University of Technology). Providing guidance and support for PhD students from research groups around the world working with GPS-based measures is an important part of his job, and the past years he has hosted 14 foreign PhD students for periods varying from 5 days to 5 months.
Karen Milton
PRESIDENT-ELECT

Karen is an Associate Professor in Public Health within the Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia (UK). She held previous positions in physical activity and public health at the University of Oxford, University of Sydney, and Loughborough University.

Karen’s primary research interest is in population approaches to physical activity promotion, through different sector and multi-sectoral systems, and how to translate effective interventions into national policy and action. Karen was on the Strategic Advisory Network for the development of the WHO Global Action Plan for Physical Activity 2018 – 2030 and a member of the Guideline Development Group for the 2020 WHO physical activity and sedentary behaviour guidelines.

Karen was the secretariat for ISPAH before joining the board as lead for governance. She was elected as President-elect in 2020 and is on track to be the longest serving Board member in ISPAH history!

Catherine Draper
PAST PRESIDENT
Catherine Draper is an Associate Professor in the MRC/Wits Developmental Pathways for Health Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, and is also affiliated to the Division of Exercise Science and Sports Medicine at the University of Cape Town. Catherine has a background in Psychology and the social sciences, and obtained her PhD in Public Health in 2005. Her research interests have included the development and evaluation of school- and community-based physical activity interventions for children and youth, including sport-for-development programmes.

Catherine is particularly interested in movement behaviours and cognitive development in preschool children from low-income settings in South Africa, and is working on the Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative to promote health and development in early childhood, starting preconception. She led the development of the South African 24-hour Movement Guidelines for Birth to 5 Years, and is currently leading dissemination of these guidelines.
Lisa Cadmus-Bertram
TREASURER
Lisa Cadmus-Bertram is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Wisconsin – Madison (USA). She earned her Ph.D. in Epidemiology and Psychology at Yale University and completed her postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Health Services at the University of Washington in Seattle, in conjunction with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. She worked at the University of California, San Diego from 2009-2014 before to moving to Wisconsin.

Dr. Cadmus-Bertram has 15 years of experience delivering physical activity interventions. Her current research centers on exercise and health promotion in cancer survivors and rural populations, with a special focus on technology-based interventions and health informatics. She is particularly interested in the development and evaluation of interventions that involve the integration of patient-generated data streams into the electronic health record (EHR). She is an associate editor at the Journal for the Measurement of Physical Behaviour and serves as the chair of the Society of Behavioural Medicine’s Behavioural Informatics and Technology (BIT) Special Interest Group. She also leads the American College of Sport’s Medicine “Exercise is Medicine On Campus” team at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Gemma Ryde
VICE-TREASURER
Gemma is a Lecturer in Physical Activity within the Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport at the University of Stirling in Scotland. Her research focuses on physical activity and health in the workplace and she completed her PhD at the University of Queensland in 2013 investigating sitting time in Australian office employees.

Prior to her academic career Gemma worked for several years on community health promotion initiatives and community development with a focus on walking for health. She is therefore interested in research that has impact in this setting and evaluation of real world interventions. Gemma is currently Vice Chair on the board of a local leisure provider in Scotland and an Early Career Representative on the Prospective Physical Activity, Sitting and Sleep consortium.
Matthew McLaughlin
COMMUNICATIONS
Matthew Mclaughlin (Tepi) is a PhD Student at the University of Newcastle, a Research Assistant at Hunter New England Population Health, the Chair of the ISPAH Early Career Network. Tepi also holds a number of consultancy positions in social media, including Social Media Editor of the Journal of Sports Sciences.

His avid interest is in getting physical activity and sedentary behaviour evidence into practice. Tepi’s core research focus is in the implementation, scaling and dissemination of efficacious physical activity interventions. In 2017, Tepi completed his Sport and Exercise Science BSc (Hons) at Loughborough University and the University of Western Australia. In 2015, Tepi took a year out of study to complete a one year work placement in research, a Diploma of Professional Studies.

Tepi is very active on Twitter (@HealthTepi), get in contact! For Tepi’s research activities, please see his ResearchGate.
Anna Chalkley
COUNCILS
Anna is a Senior Research Associate at Loughborough University and a physical activity and public health ‘pracademic’, supporting the translation, dissemination and implementation of academic research into practice. Much of Anna’s work has focused on the school setting as a target for physical activity and health promotion, her PhD examined the implementation of a school-based running programme in England.

Anna joined the ISPAH board as Secretariat in 2016, she is also a member of the steering committee for the European Network for Health Enhancing Physical Activity (HEPA Europe) and co-chairs the Working Group for Children and Youth.
Lindsey Reece
ADVOCACY
Lindsey has extensive experience in applied research and evaluation, specialising in Physical Activity, Sport and Public Health. Within her current role as Research Fellow at the University of Sydney’s School of Public Health, she is the Academic Director of the SPRINTER (Sport and Active Recreation Intervention & Epidemiology Research) group – an innovative research partnership with the Office of Sport, NSW government. SPRINTER is an exemplar of true partnership and works in supporting policy makers to listen and translate the evidence base, through informed decision making, policy development and evaluations of government led programs and services.

SPRINTER also works on contributing to the evidence base by focusing on the role of sport and recreation in increasing population physical levels to promote healthy and happy communities. SPRINTER works collaboratively with Sport Australia and with the sport and recreation sector, to enhance capability and capacity to create environments that enable more people to be active through sport and recreation.

A capable strategist and confident thought leader, Lindsey is happiest and at her best when managing numerous projects across a portfolio of highly complex, multi-sector programmes. Her leadership is demonstrated by her role as Academic lead for parkrun au, her executive committee position on the Australasian Society for Physical Activity (ASPA) and her active membership on the boards of Outdoors NSW and the parkrun global research board.
Jacqueline Mair
GOVERNANCE
Dr Jacqueline Mair is a Senior Scientist with the Singapore-ETH Centre. Jacqueline’s research focusses on ways to increase physical activity and reduce sedentary behaviour using digital technology and explores what impact digital interventions have on health outcomes. Her PhD work examined the health and fitness benefits of low volume vigorous intensity exercise in middle aged and older adults and involved a technology-delivered workplace exercise intervention in which 3-minute exercise ‘snacks’ improved physical fitness and mobility in middle-aged office workers after just 4 weeks. She has progressed her interest in technology and workplace health to examining how mobile and pervasive technologies can be used to monitor and promote healthy behaviours in different settings and with different populations.

Jacqueline was the Congress Representative for the ISPAH Early Career Network in 2018 before becoming Chair of the ISPAH Communications Committee in October 2018.
Elroy Aguiar
IT SYSTEMS
Dr. Aguiar’s research is focused on step-based measurement of physical activity, with a specific emphasis on quantifying the dose-response relationships between step-based physical activity metrics (e.g., steps/day and cadence ([steps/min]) and specific health outcomes for diabetes and cardiometabolic disease, and developing interventions that embrace step-based physical activity prescription.

Step-based metrics are a simple and intuitive measure of physical activity; a step is a fundamental unit of human movement. Furthermore, the adoption of step-based metrics by wearable technology companies, e.g., Fitbit, Garmin, Apple Watch, etc., is testament to the fact that they are widely accepted by the general population and are being used to both inform and motivate individuals.
Candice Christie
EDUCATION
Professor Candice Christie is an associate professor in the Department of Human Kinetics and Ergonomics, Rhodes University, South Africa. The focus of Candice’s physical activity research is the prevalence of physical inactivity and sedentary behaviour and levels of physical fitness in primary school children in South Africa. Her work includes working on the Healthy Active Kids Report Card in South Africa.

Candice has been a part of the Education Committee of ISPAH for the last few years and is on the Executive of the South African Sports Medicine Association. Her main research area is the Science of Cricket: South Africa has produced many great cricketers, many of which have come from the Eastern Cape, a province in South Africa with a rich history of cricket. It is thus fitting that one of the largest cricket research groups in the world is housed at Rhodes University, in the Department of Human Kinetics and Ergonomics (HKE), headed by Candice. The basic foundation of the group comes from the Department of Sport and Recreation, South Africa’s logo, “From Grassroots to Protea”. As a result of her work, she was awarded the contract to manage the Protea’s men’s and women’s side’s workload data. This means that the research group has access to daily information being entered by coaches, players and medical staff on an online platform. Their work with the Proteas has resulted in them being given access to the same data of other teams such as the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Hobart Hurricanes. It has also resulted in collaboration with Gary Kirsten Cricket and the Gary Kirsten Foundation and working with local schools in the area.

Her goal is to link her work in physical activity with the sport of cricket. She has over 40 publications in peer-reviewed journal articles and is a C2 rated scientist with the National Research Foundation of South Africa.
Andrea Ramirez Varela
MEMBERSHIP
Andrea Ramírez Varela obtained her MD and MPH degrees from Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá Colombia in 2010 and 2014. Since 2014, she is the coordinator of the Global Observatory for Physical Activity – GoPA! and from 2015 to 2018 she was field coordinator for the child morbidity and mortality sub-study of the Pelotas Birth Cohort in 2015 in Brazil. In 2018 she obtained her Ph.D. in Epidemiology degree from the Post Graduate Program in Epidemiology at the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil. During 2017, she was a research scholar in the Family Medicine and Public Health Department at University of California San Diego, UCSD.

Currently, Andrea is assistant professor at the Faculty of Medicine at Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. Her research interests are epidemiology; preventive medicine; non-communicable diseases and physical activity epidemiology; global public health capacity for chronic disease prevention and physical activity promotion; and, translation research especially in Latin America.
Gabreilla McLoughlin
EARLY CAREER NETWORK
Gabriella is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Prevention Research Center and Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University in St. Louis P50 center program. Gabriella received a Masters and Doctoral degree in Kinesiology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2012-2018), before working at Iowa State University as a postdoctoral research associate (2018-2020) leading projects on childhood obesity prevention and school wellness programming.

Her research interests pertain to implementation science in chronic disease prevention, with specific applications to school and community programming. She has led numerous projects on school-based wellness programming to promote children’s nutrition and physical activity behaviors. Current projects at the ISC3 center encompass a variety of topics pertaining to health disparities in cancer prevention, school health policy implementation, and school and community approaches to obesity prevention.
Jade Morris
SECRETARIAT
Jade is a physical activity and childhood health researcher. Jade has just finished her PhD within the Centre of Active Lifestyles Research group at Leeds Beckett University. Jade’s thesis focuses on the acute effects of school-based run-walk initiative – such as The Daily Mile – on physical activity, executive function and academic performance. Much of Jade’s work has focused on school-based interventions focusing on physical activity, cognition and health outcomes.

Some of Jade’s more recent research outputs have been contributing to physically active learning project – understanding the core competencies teachers need to facilitate learning through movement during typically sedentary lessons.
Welcome Back!

Welcome Back!

Main Menu

Log in
Sign up

Full Membership
Members Menu
Sign out

Full Membership
Menu
Preferences
Sign out

Main Menu

Sign in