P.R. (René) van Weeren
DVM, PhD, Dipl. ECVS, Prof.
René van Weeren graduated in 1983 from the Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He became a staff member of the Department of General and Large Animal Surgery in that year and obtained his PhD degree in 1989.
From 1991-1993 he worked as a visiting professor at the Escuela de Medicina Veterinaria of the Universidad Nacional in Heredia, Costa Rica. He became a diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Surgeons in 1994.
L (Lars) Roepstorff
DVM, PhD, Prof.
Lars Roepstorff graduated as a veterinary surgeon 1985. He has practised as an equine clinician both in private practice at different clinics and at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).
He has worked closely to equestrian sports with assignment as a national team vet and as a lecturer in continuing education of professional trainers. He has headed the department of Equine Studies at SLU.
K. (Kevin) Keegan
DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACVS, Prof.
Kevin Keegan graduated in 1983 from the University of Missouri’s College of Veterinary Medicine before entering private equine practice for 3 years.
After completing an equine surgery residency and Master’s degree in Veterinary Clinical Medicine at the University of Illinois in 1989 (studying biomechanics and bioengineering), he returned to private practice in an equine surgical referral center in Michigan.
M.A. (Michael) Weishaupt
Dr.med.vet., PhD, Dipl. ACVSMR, Prof.
Michael Weishaupt graduated in Veterinary Medicine in 1989 at the University of Berne. Between 1990 and 1993 he worked as an assistant at the Swiss National Stud in Avenches and completed his doctoral thesis on “The relationship among local structural, biochemical and functional variables describing muscle oxidative capacity in horses and steers” at the Department of Large Animal Medicine of the University of Berne.
F.M. (Filipe) Serra Bragança
DVM, PhD
Filipe Manuel Serra Bragança was born in 1988 in Portugal. He graduated in 2013, from the Veterinary University of Lisbon. After graduation, he performed his internship at an equine practice in the UK.
In 2014 he started his PhD at Utrecht University (the Netherlands) performing research in biomechanics and equine locomotion, focusing on objective gait analysis.
A.M. (Aagje) Hardeman
DVM, PhD, IVCA-cert. chiropractor
Aagje Hardeman (1986) graduated from Utrecht University in 2012, as Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. Afterwards, she did the BackBone Academy in Germany, to become a certified equine chiropractor. In 2014, she moved to Germany to work at Tierklinik Lüsche, one of the biggest referral clinics in Europe, where she has been part of the orthopaedic and rehabilitation team. Simultaneously, she did her PhD, supervised by Prof. Dr. Rene van Weeren (Utrecht) and Prof. Dr. Lars Roepstorff (Uppsala).
C. (Christoffer) Roepstorff
MSc, PhD
In 2014, during his master thesis at Uppsala University, Sweden, Christoffer started working with the kinematics of lameness in horses. The thesis led directly to his employment at Qualisys AB, Gothenburg, Sweden, as Product Owner and Business Development Director for Equine Solutions. There, he developed software for quantifying kinematic asymmetries in horses using marker based optical motion capture, geared towards clinical use.
E. (Emma) Persson-Sjödin
DVM, PhD
Emma graduated in 2015 at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Uppsala, Sweden. She received her postgraduate education at the department of Anatomy, Physiology and Biochemistry, SLU.
In 2020 she defended her thesis entitled “Evaluation of vertical movement asymmetries in riding horses” which investigates the clinical significance and interpretation of vertical movement asymmetries in riding horses under different circumstances and the use of objective systems to improve orthopaedic diagnostics.
R. (Russell) MacKechnie-Guire
PhD, BHSI, BSc (Hons)
Russell MacKechnie-Guire holds a PhD in Equine Biomechanics, graduating from the Royal Veterinary College in 2019. Russell’s thesis was titled ‘The Relationship between Saddle and Rider Kinematics, Equine Locomotion, and Thoracolumbar Pressures in Sports Horses’.
Russell is based at Centaur Biomechanics, a company which he founded in 2006.
J.I.M. (Jeanne) Parmentier
MSc. Eng. PhD-c
Jeanne Parmentier (1995) graduated in 2018 from Biology Engineering at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne (France). Her Bachelor‘s (France) and Master’s (Texas, USA) research projects focused on developing measurement tools and algorithms to gather biomechanical information from horses and sheep inertial measurement units, 3D motion capture, and force plate data.
Once her diploma was obtained, she was hired as a research engineer by the École Nationale Vétérinaire d’Alfort (France) and worked in close collaboration with the CIRALE in Normandie to develop an equine locomotion quantification tool.
