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Dickerson, Clark

Clark Dickerson

photo of Clark Dickerson
  • Assistant Professor
  • BSc (Alfred), MSc (Clemson), PhD (Michigan)

Contact:


 

Research:

In summary, my research program aims to generate new knowledge in four major areas:

  • Fundamental shoulder function and dysfunction;
  • Creation and validation of mathematical models to predict exposures in the shoulder
  • Applications of shoulder biomechanics to workplace exertions; and
  • Rehabilitative and preventative strategies for ensuring shoulder health

When pursuing these areas, I rely on various techniques and approaches from biomedical sciences, engineering, kinesiology, physics, mathematics, medicine, rehabilitation science, psychology, and the social sciences to perform integrated, holistic analyses.

Research projects in these areas have ranged widely and all have involved student participation, from the undergraduate, MSc, and PhD levels. Some examples of work done in my lab include:

  • Developing and validating an intricate, scalable 3-dimensional musculoskeletal model of the shoulder for task analysis
  • Examining police cruiser interior designs for risks to the upper extremity and back for mobile police officers
  • Documenting and interpreting the movement patterns of injured elderly persons and implications for designs of nursing homes and assistive devices
  • Designing workstations that consider capacity limitations subsequent to spinal cord injury or chronic low back pain
  • Quantifying the consequences of fatigue on humeral head translation and scapular orientation
  • Evaluating competing work techniques for utility workers in terms of musculoskeletal injury risk
  • Producing psychophysical effort perception models to relate physical exposures to worker impressions of those exposures
  • Investigating the influence of wheelchair wheel type on torso and upper extremity demands in ramp ascent
  • Reporting the effectiveness of job rotation on muscular loading and fatigue development in the shoulder
  • Developing new, efficient, non-expert workplace analysis tools for assessing shoulder physical loading
  • Interfacing complex biomechanical models with existing and future ergonomic analysis software
  • Identifying determinants of upper limb strength, including scapular orientation, direction of exertion, and population differences
  • Evaluating the efficacy and accuracy of clinical manual muscle tests for determining specific rotator cuff muscle weakness
  • Creating an empirical spatially-driven shoulder muscle activity database for hand exertions which is used both for improving interface layouts and validating muscle force predictions
  • Improving and generating methods for applying electromyographic methods to the study of muscles of the shoulder region

My overriding goal as a researcher is to produce new information to improve both the working and non-working lives of people throughout the world, with a particular focus on the shoulder.

Key Publications:

(* indicates a student at the time of publication)

Dickerson C.R., Martin B.J., and Chaffin D.B., 2007, Predictors of perceived effort in the shoulder during load transfer tasks, Ergonomics, 50(7):1004-16.

Dickerson C.R., Chaffin D.B., and Hughes R.E., 2007, A mathematical musculoskeletal shoulder model for proactive ergonomic analysis, Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering, 10(6):389-400.

Dickerson C.R., Hughes R.E., and Chaffin D.B., 2008, Experimental evaluation of a computational shoulder muscle force model, Clinical Biomechanics, 23:886-894.

*Grieve J.R. and Dickerson C.R., 2008, Overhead work: Identification of evidence-based exposure guidelines, Occupational Ergonomics, 8:53-66.

*Fischer S.L., Wells R.P. and Dickerson C.R., 2009, Controlling the upper limb: the effect of added degrees of freedom and handle type on upper limb muscle activation, Ergonomics, 52(1):25-35.

*Chow A.Y and Dickerson C.R., 2009, Shoulder strength of females while sitting and standing as a function of hand location and force direction, Applied Ergonomics, 40(3):303-308.

*Chopp J.N., *Fischer S.L., and Dickerson C.R., 2009, The impact of work configuration, target angle, and hand force direction on upper extremity muscle activity during sub-maximal overhead work, Ergonomics, in press as of September 5, 2009.

*Waite D.L., *Brookham R.L., and Dickerson C.R., 2009, On the usefulness of using surface electrode placements to estimate indwelling myoelectric activity of the rotator cuff, Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology, in press as of October 5, 2009.

*Brookham R.L., McLean L., and Dickerson C.R., 2009, Functional isolation of rotator cuff muscles in manual muscle tests: an electromyographic evaluation, The Physical Therapy Journal (PTJ), in press as of October 30, 2009.

*Fischer S.L., *Belbeck A.L., and Dickerson C.R., 2010, The influence of providing feedback on force production and within-participant reproducibility during maximal voluntary exertions for the anterior deltoid, middle deltoid and infraspinatus, Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology 20:68-75..

*Picco B.F., *Fischer S.L., and Dickerson C.R., 2010, Scapular orientation influences both shoulder strength and muscle activity, Clinical Biomechanics, 25:29-36.

Brown S.H.M., *Brookham R.L., and Dickerson C.R., 2010, High-pass filtering surface EMG in an attempt to better represent the signals detected at the intramuscular level, Muscle and Nerve, 41(2):234-9

Courses Taught:

(* indicates current)
KIN 420 Occupational Biomechanics*
KIN 428 Upper Extremity Disorders*
KIN 470 Seminar in Kinesiology
KIN 612 Instrumentation and Signal Processing in Biophysical Research
KIN 613 Modern Methods in Biomechanical Modeling*