Post-Doctoral Fellowships

​Affiliation: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Dr. Dixon is collaborating with the Center for Physical Ergonomics on investigations in the area of walking biomechanics. His contributions will include a study of the effects of irregular surfaces and changes in walking direction on gait biomechanics in older adults.

 

Through his research, Dr. Dixon aims to better understand the adaptations required for people who have restricted mobility to successfully navigate both the natural and built environments. He also conducts research to improve biomechanical data analysis and develops programming tools to help other researchers optimize their data processing workflow.

 

In 2015, Dr. Dixon earned his doctorate degree in engineering science at the University of Oxford. He also earned a Master of Science in biomechanics, a Bachelor of Science in physics and a Bachelor in Education in physics and mathematics education from McGill University. He is a member of the International Society of Biomechanics, the Gait and Clinical Movement Analysis Society, the Canadian Society of Biomechanics and the European Society for Movement Analysis in Adults and Children.

 

Dr. Dixon is a reviewer for Gait & Posture, the Journal of Biomechanics, Clinical Biomechanics, Footwear Science, and the International Journal of Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering. He has published numerous articles and has presented his work at international conferences.

​Affiliation: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Dr. Fischer is collaborating with the Center for Injury Epidemiology to examine the impact of circadian rhythm disruption on injury risk. During her tenure, she will apply her expertise on biological rhythms and sleep-wake behavior and advance a risk index model based on work components and individual characteristics. This project involves an extensive systematic review of the literature including quantitative meta-analysis, as well as time-series analyses of daily rhythms in accident and injury risk.

 

Most recently, Dr. Fischer worked as a research and teaching associate with the Medical Faculty of the Ludwig-Maximilian-University in Munich, Germany. Her research interests focus on the potentials and challenges of individual differences in sleep and circadian rhythms for the design of work schedules. While at the University, Dr. Fischer and colleagues developed, implemented and evaluated a unique shift system that was tailored to employees’ individual sleep preferences (chronotypes). They demonstrated the system’s benefits on several health and safety-related outcomes. Dr. Fischer’s research interests also include understanding the underlying mechanisms of human chronotypes by using mathematical models of the sleep-wake regulatory brain network.

 

In 2011, Dr. Fischer graduated as a psychologist with a specialization in clinical psychology from the University of Munich, and in 2015, she received her Ph.D. in human biology from the University’s Medical Faculty. In her doctoral thesis, she developed a method to quantify and visualize circadian disruption in rotational shift workers, for which she received an award from the Working Time Society. She has co-authored four peer-reviewed journal papers and a book chapter, and she has presented research at conferences around the world. Currently, she serves as a reviewer for Chronobiology International and the Journal of Biological Rhythms. Dr. Fischer is a member of the Working Time Society, Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, European Biological Rhythm Society and Deutsche Arbeitszeitgesellschaft e.V.

Affiliation: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Dr. Hu is an industrial engineer with research expertise in biomechanics, human motion analysis and fall prevention. He is working with Research Institute scientists to test the validity of a remote laser-based sensing device (Lidar) to quantify environmental surfaces and human gait behavior in the built environment.

As part of this project, Dr. Hu will develop programs to facilitate 3D Lidar data analyses and an algorithm to track center-of-mass measures across various tasks and conditions.

Dr. Hu’s research background includes the application of kinematics, electromyography and biomechanical modeling in relation to human motion and explores safety-related questions.

As a research assistant at West Virginia University, Dr. Hu examined the effects of local anesthesia on the balance and motion patterns of patients. He conducted theoretical studies on the effects of uneven surfaces on back injury and on the relationship between lower extremity postures and fatigue on spine biomechanics.

Dr. Hu earned his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from West Virginia University. While there, he was among a team of 10 engineers that won NASA’s 2015 Sample Robot Return Challenge.

Dr. Peters is working with Research Institute disability scientists to assess whether an early intervention protocol can reduce disability and employer costs for workers with acute low back pain and whether such a protocol is feasible in a U.S. occupational medicine setting. She will use existing research to help design and test an intervention protocol to help patients identified as “high disability risk” to better function and cope with chronic pain.

In her current affiliated position as senior research coordinator at Brisbane Hand and Upper Limb Research Institute, Peters oversees various aspects of research—from grant writing to project development and supervision. At the Harvard School of Public Health Center for Work, Health and Wellbeing she is working on a project to help reduce musculoskeletal injuries and improve dietary patterns among low income food service workers.

Her key research interests include: interventions to prevent work disability; factors influencing return to work; and the role of healthcare providers and key stakeholders in return-to-work processes.

Dr. Peters earned her Ph.D. from the University of Queensland, Australia. While there, she was selected as one of 10 international delegates for the Work Disability Prevention Strategic Training Program of the Canadian Institute of Health Research, where she served a two-year term.

​Affiliation: University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Dr. Zhang is collaborating with the Center for Behavioral Sciences in the area of transportation research. During her tenure, her studies will investigate the effects of driver fatigue and driver visual scanning patterns on motor vehicle control. She will also evaluate the effectiveness of a training program for improving fatigued driver performance.

 

Previously, Dr. Zhang was a graduate student and teaching assistant at City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include aggressive driving, driver training, fatigue detection and crash data analysis. She has published five peer-reviewed journal papers and has presented her work at several professional conferences. She serves as a reviewer for several peer-reviewed journals such as Transportation Research Part F, Accident Analysis and Prevention and Decision Science Journal of Innovative Education.

 

In 2015, Dr. Zhang received her Ph.D. degree in systems engineering and engineering management from City University of Hong Kong. Her dissertation has provided insights into the effect of driving anger on driver performance and allocation of visual attention. She earned her M.S. degree in Industrial Engineering from Tsinghua University, China in 2012 and her B.S. in control science and engineering from Shandong University, China in 2010.