AHS Adds to the Faculty
Five individuals have joined the professorial ranks of the College of Applied Health Sciences, two in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health and three in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism.
KCH
Manuel Hernandez
Dr. Hernandez earned a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan in 2012. He was a postdoctoral scholar in the Institute for Neural Computation at the University of California, San Diego, before joining AHS as an assistant professor.
Dr. Hernandez’s research interests include risk factors for injury or disability during the performance of goal-directed movements, speed-accuracy tradeoffs in the control of whole body movements, and the behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying the breakdown of postural control in older adults with and without Parkinson’s disease. His dissertation research focused on the mechanisms underlying downward reaching and picking-up difficulty in older women and the effect of age on speed versus accuracy tradeoffs in the control of whole body movements involving large trunk range of motion. As a postdoctoral scholar, he assessed the effect of Parkinson’s disease and dopaminergic therapy on motor adaptation to grasping tasks, examined the role of deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus on reaching in patients with Parkinson’s disease, and investigated the neural and behavioral mechanisms underlying postural dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease.
In 2005, Dr. Hernandez received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging to investigate trunk control biomechanics in older adults.
Citlali López-Ortiz
Before joining AHS as an assistant professor, Dr. López-Ortiz was a research scientist and consultant on dance rehabilitation research in the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago’s Sensory Motor Performance Program, a member of the faculty of the Joffrey Ballet Academy, an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, and director of First Position Dance and Movement Technology, LLC.
Her area of general research interest is how the brain learns and controls movement using dance movement language. She plans to develop dance applications and interventions for physical rehabilitation and movement training in health and disease. She has conducted research on dance and motor learning for children with cerebral palsy; quantitatively characterized selective motor control, spasticity, and dystonia in cerebral palsy; and investigated the effectiveness of a classical ballet dance class for movement rehabilitation in individuals with Parkinson’s Disease.
Dr. López-Ortiz completed her doctoral degree in biomechanics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During her studies, she was the recipient of the Virginia Horne Henry Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellowship, the Vilas Professional Development Award, and two consecutive Marie L. Carns Fellowships. She received institutional and individual National Service Research Awards from the National Institutes of Health during her postdoctoral training. She holds classical ballet teacher certification, Cuban methodology, from the Ballet Academy of Coyoacán, in association with Ballet National de Cuba.
RST
Toni Liechty
After completing her Ph.D. in leisure studies at The Pennsylvania State University in 2009, Dr. Liechty joined the Faculty of Kinesiology and Health Studies at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. She moved on to Clemson University, where she was an assistant professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management until she joined RST as an assistant professor.
Dr. Liechty’s research interests include the relationships between physically active leisure and body image, embodiment, and health and well-being, as well as leisure across the lifespan. With funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, she has investigated body image and physical activity among various groups including pregnant women, retirement-age men and women, and female athletes. Her scholarly articles on leisure, body image, and aging have appeared in such leading journals as Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, Leisure Sciences, Journal of Leisure Research and International Journal of Men’s Health.
In 2007, Dr. Liechty received the prestigious Juran Doctoral Award from the Joseph M. Juran Center for Leadership in Quality at the University of Minnesota.
Nuno Ribeiro
Dr. Ribeiro completed his Ph.D. in recreation, park, and tourism management at The Pennsylvania State University in 2011, with a minor in Cultural Anthropology. He went on to do postdoctoral work in culture and behavior at the Indigenous Peoples’ Health Research Centre in Regina, Saskatchewan, and joined the faculty of Clemson University as a research assistant professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management. In 2013, Dr. Ribeiro received a postdoctoral fellowship from the Canadian Institute of Health Research. Dr. Ribeiro joined the RST faculty at Illinois this fall as an assistant professor. He is currently a member of the University of Illinois RST International Relations Committee.
Dr. Ribeiro’s research addresses the comparative study of youth culture and behavior within tourism and leisure phenomena, with a strong anthropological emphasis. His primary interest is in risky youth behaviors related to alcohol and drug consumption and sexual behavior in hedonistic tourism settings, with parallel interests in the health of First Nations/Native American youth. He has conducted fieldwork among fishermen in Portugal, amateur boxers in central Pennsylvania, students on spring break in Florida, French Canadian minority students, and Cree, Lakota, Nakota, and Dene youth in Saskatchewan. Dr. Ribeiro’s research agenda hopes to contribute to a better cultural understanding of young people’s risky behaviour in tourism and leisure settings, which in turn will lead to the design, implementation, and evaluation of more successful health interventions and strategies.
Carena van Riper
Dr. van Riper's research focuses on psychological mechanisms such as values, attitudes, and norms that underlie pro-environmental behaviors. Much of her work is conducted in parks and protected areas, particularly coastal and aquatic environments, with the goal of increasing public involvement in decision-making and sustaining the flow of benefits that nature provides to stakeholders such as outdoor recreationists. She has applied theories from social psychology to issues such as climate change impacts on the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in Australia, the spread of invasive species and overfishing in Channel Islands National Park, CA, and visitor crowding in Acadia National Park, ME. Her research carries implications for improving communication and outreach on environmental issues and strategies for behavior change.
Before joining RST as an Assistant Professor, Dr. Van Riper completed her Ph.D. in recreation, park and tourism sciences at Texas A&M University, where she was a research assistant in the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources Laboratory. She also spent two field seasons in Australia as a Visiting Scholar at James Cook University’s Fishing and Fisheries Research Centre. In 2013, Dr. van Riper received funding from the National Science Foundation’s IGERT Program (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship) for a field school in the Peruvian Amazon, and she has received accolades such as the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Research from Texas A&M University.