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Mike Adams

Mike is Professor of Biomechanics, Centre for Comparative and Clinical Anatomy, University of Bristol. He has a BSc in Natural Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh and took his PhD in the mechanical properties of lumbar intervertebral joints, with special reference to the causes of low back pain at the University of Westminster.

Since 1980, Mike has published 126 full-length papers and book chapters, including Biomechanics of Back Pain. He has received numerous awards and honours, both in the UK and internationally, including a National Back Pain Association Medal, a Volvo Award for Back Pain Research and a Back Care Award from the Society for Back Pain Research.

Andrew Auty

Dr Andrew R Auty MA has been advising the UK Liability Insurance market since 1995, first as an employee at the Loss Prevention Council and since 2002 as Director of Re: Liability (Oxford) Ltd. The regular work centres on identifying and evaluating emerging liability risks, including those created by changes in the law and business practice. Reports are made in a quarterly journal for liability insurers. Bespoke reports are also produced.

In 1997, Andrew wrote the first ABI advisory report on effective methods of rehabilitation. Physiotherapy for whiplash was, without any doubt, not effective but thoroughly believed in. In 1999, Andrew proposed and then oversaw the production of the Whiplash Book, in addition, a research project designed to establish potent prognostic indicators and another to develop guidance for the A&E assessment of whiplash.

In 2009, following a wide-ranging review of claims management systems and the published science related to causation, diagnosis, harm assessment and prognosis, it was concluded: when well-packaged beliefs become more potent than facts, market instability should come as no surprise.

Matthew Avery
Matthew is Head of Research for Safety at Thatcham, the Motor Insurance Repair Research Centre. His current role involves liaison with vehicle manufacturers, legislators and governments in all aspects of crash testing, with a view to encouraging safer designs and cost-effective vehicle repair.

Matthew has led much of the research work into whiplash testing. He co-authored the International Insurance seat assessment procedure, now used by Euro NCAP. Matthew represents the British Insurers within Euro NCAP on various technical working groups and also advises on whiplash issues within the European legislative framework. He also chairs various working groups within the crash-test community. He has led work in bumper compatibility testing issues in order to improve vehicle-to-vehicle crash engagement and control repair costs. His team is now actively researching into collision-avoidance technology and has done much work in Electronic Stability Control (ESC) and Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB), chairing a group that is developing and implementing test procedures to harmonise this new sphere of crash protection.

Matthew and his team were awarded the prestigious Prince Michael of Kent 2009 Premier Safety Award in recognition of their pioneering work in whiplash prevention and Electronic Stability Control.

Educated at Bournemouth University, prior to joining Thatcham Matthew worked briefly at British Airways Engineering before moving to the Atomic Energy Authority. He has authored many papers in the area of crash research and injury prevention and is married with two children who always adjust their head restraints.

David Aylor

David Aylor is a Senior Research Engineer at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s Vehicle Research Center.  He has worked for the Institute since 2004 and has been closely involved with all the crashworthiness programmes, including overseeing the rear impact and roof strength test programs.  Mr Aylor was also involved in the development of the low-speed bumper programme.  His areas of research include rear impact, low-speed damageability and crash avoidance technology. He received his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Virginia.

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Gordon Bannister

Gordon Bannister is Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Bristol and Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at the Avon Orthopaedic Centre, Southmead Hospital. His clinical practice is divided between adult joint replacement and general orthopaedics. He has published 160 peer-reviewed papers, ranging from disorders of the brain, neck, shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee, the control and management of surgical infection, thromboprophylaxis, rupture of the Achilles tendon to undergraduate medical education. Of these, 20 have been on the prognosis and assessment of whiplash injury.

He has written a further eight review chapters on whiplash injury – variously in Foy and Fagg’s Medicolegal Reporting in Orthopaedic Trauma, Oxford Textbook of Trauma and Orthopaedics and the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery, British Volume (British Volume) – and lectured widely on the subject in Europe and North America.

His current research interests in the cervical spine are the prevalence and severity of neck pain in the general population, and the comparability and responsiveness of Patient Reported Outcome Measures of neck disability.

His Master’s thesis was on the Acromioclavicular Dislocation and his Doctorate on Fixation of the Femoral Component in Hip Replacement, for which he was awarded the Robert Jones Gold Medal of the British Orthopaedic Association. He is British Representative and past Secretary General of the European Hip Society and President of the British Hip Society. His special interest is training the next generation of surgeons and he has developed a number of programmes to educate junior doctors and medical students. He was elected as the British Orthopaedic Trainees Association’s Trainer of the Year in 2010.

Mike Brockman

Mike has specialised in the motor insurance market for more than 30 years and has worked both within the industry and as a consultant during that period.

He is an actuary by profession and founding Partner of EMB Consultancy LLP, sold last year to Towers Watson. EMB employed more than 300 people in 11 countries and was awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise twice: in 2003 for Innovation and in 2007 for International Trade. In 2008, EMB was awarded ‘Service Provider of the Year’ at the British Insurance awards, the first firm of actuaries to have received this accolade. Mike, while a consultant, acted for many of the largest insurers in the market.

Although an actuary, Mike’s expertise has not been limited to traditional actuarial roles. He is a specialist in new start-ups and was routinely involved in all aspects of insurance business, including marketing, pricing, capital management, reserving and data management. Mike is a renowned innovator and entrepreneur, and was awarded the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award by his fellow actuarial professionals at the GIRO conference in Sorrento, Italy, the non- life actuarial profession’s annual conference. Mike still had more to prove, however, and in May 2009 founded Insurethebox, the UK’s first telematics only insurer, where Mike currently is Group CEO.

Insurethebox started trading in June 2010 and in the first 18 months of trading has more than 50,000 live customers, employing 150 people.

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Linda has a clinical background in psychology and an academic appointment as Professor of Epidemiology, in the Department of Public Health Sciences, School of Public Health, at the University of Alberta.  She is also an Associated Research Scientist with the Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research, an Adjunct Scientist with the Institute for Work & Health and an Adjunct Professor in the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic Collage, and is on the associate editorial board of the European Spine Journal.

She holds a Senior Health Scholar award (a seven-year salary support award) from Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions (with funding from the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research) and, prior to this, held a Health Scholar award (same granting agency).

Linda teaches masters and doctoral level courses in epidemiological methods at the University of Alberta and has also taught doctoral level epidemiology courses at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. In 2009/10, she was Visiting Professor at the Occupational and Industrial Orthopaedic Center, New York University, where (among other collaborative projects) she served as a consultant to a project to develop clinical practice guidelines for occupation-related back disorders to be used in occupational health departments in several branches of the US VA hospitals.

Her own research programme includes both quantitative and qualitative methods, and has largely focused on psychosocial aspects of health and recovery from neck and back injuries. Her current research concentrates primarily on the role of beliefs, expectations and mood in recovery of musculoskeletal disorders. She has been a core member of three international, multidisciplinary Task Forces, including one focusing on neck pain and whiplash associated disorders (The Bone and Joint Decade 2000-2010 Task Force on Neck Pain and Its Associated Disorders), published in 2008. Her academic interests are broad and she has recently published a co-edited book on community development, aimed at highlighting some of the under-recognised fundamental predicaments and philosophical quandaries that can underlie community development and community action endeavours.

Don Clarke

Don is Director of Strategy at Keoghs, with over 20 years’ experience of defendant personal injury litigation.  Don spent a number of years in the counter-fraud arena, assisting insurers in relation to their counter-fraud strategies. More recently, he has focused on credit hire, working with insurers to define and maintain a sensible strategy towards the credit hire market, including developing processes and procedures geared towards equitable settlements.  Don was appointed President of FOIL in November 2011.  He is a member of the Civil Justice Council’s working party on the implementation of Lord Justice Jackson’s civil justice reforms and he also takes an active role in Keoghs’ Jackson Working Group.

Arthur Croft

Arthur Croft is the Director of the Spine Research Institute of San Diego. He has been actively engaged in whiplash research for the past 30 years and coauthored the first and best-selling textbook on the subject of whiplash (Whiplash Injuries: the Cervical Acceleration/Deceleration Syndrome, 3rd edition, 2002). He coauthored Whiplash and Temporomandibular Disorders: an Interdisciplinary Approach to Case Management, along with several textbook chapters and over 300 professional papers. He is also author of the textbook Whiplash and Mild Traumatic Brain Injures (2009).

Dr Croft was the original developer of the now widely used whiplash grading system. He wrote and produced the Emmy-nominated video Whiplash and he has conducted more than 90 full-scale human subject crash tests, many of which are featured on the DVDs Machine vs. Man I and II.

Dr Croft is a trauma epidemiologist, a biomechanist, an accident reconstructionist and is board certified in chiropractic orthopaedics. He serves on the editorial boards of several professional peer-reviewed chiropractic, medical and engineering journals, including: Spine; Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery; Journal of Spine; Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation; SAE; Accident Analysis & Prevention; Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine; and the Journal of Musculoskeletal Pain. He has served as faculty of the University of California, San Diego, Southern California University of Health Sciences, Western States Chiropractic College and New York Chiropractic College.

In addition to his own research, Dr Croft has contributed to several research steering committees and has participated in RAND projects, including the cervical spine manipulation study and has served as a grant reviewer for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr Croft’s focus is public health and injury prevention.

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James Dalton

James is the Assistant Director of Property, Motor and Liability insurance at the Association of British Insurers. He leads the ABI’s work to reform the personal injury compensation system to get care and compensation to people injured on the roads more quickly. James leads on work to improve road safety and tackling uninsured driving. He is also responsible for the ABI’s work on flooding and issues associated with occupational disease.

James’ previous role was as Senior European Adviser at the ABI, where he was responsible for analysing the impact on ABI members of regulatory developments in the European institutions and undertaking lobbying work in Brussels in pursuit of the industry’s objectives.

Between 2002 and 2007, James was a Senior Adviser at the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development, where he co-ordinated a review of New Zealand’s standards and conformance infrastructure, undertook international trade negotiations and acted as Private Secretary to the New Zealand Minister of Commerce.

Anthony Dickenson
Anthony Dickenson, BSc, PhD, FmedSci, is Professor of Neuropharmacology in the Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology at University College, London in the UK. He gained his PhD at the National Institute for Medical Research, London, and has held posts in Paris, California and Sweden.

His research interests are pharmacology of the brain, including the mechanisms of pain and how pain can be controlled in both normal and pathophysiological conditions, and how to translate basic science to the patient. Prof Dickenson is an Honorary Member of the British Pain Society and was a member of the Council of the International Association for the Study of Pain for six years and is Section Editor for the journal Pain. He has authored more than 250 refereed publications and is a founding and continuing member of the Wellcome Trust-funded London Pain Consortium.

Prof. Dickenson has given plenary lectures at the World Congress on Pain; American Pain Society; European Pain Congress; Canadian Pain Society; Belgian Pain Society; ASEAPs; Scandinavian Pain Society; British Pain Society; Thailand Pain Society; Irish Pain Society; Singapore Pain Society; Australian Pain Society; New Zealand Pain Society; and many other international and national meetings. He has also spoken at the Royal Institution to GPs and schools on pain.

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James Elliott

James completed his PhD at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia in 2007. He was later awarded a post-doctoral research fellowship working within the Centre for Research Excellence in Spinal Pain, Injury and Health, the Centre for Magnetic Resonance and the Centre of National Research on Disability and Rehabilitation Medicine. He is currently a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy and Human Movement Sciences, Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois and an Honorary Senior Fellow in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Queensland, Australia.

His interdisciplinary research interests involve the use of conventional and advanced magnetic resonance imaging applications to quantify metabolic changes in the spinal cord and the temporal development of cervical spine muscular degeneration following neck trauma; central and peripheral pain processing and the role of inflammation in the development of persistent pain and disability following whiplash injury.

James was recently awarded the Eugene Michels New Investigator Award (2011) from the American Physical Therapy Association. He has published widely in the area of radiological and spine-related sciences and currently serves as an advisory board member for the journal Spine and an editorial review board member of the Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy.

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Michael Freeman

Dr Michael Freeman is a Forensic and Medical Epidemiologist specialising in the application of probability and epidemiologic data to forensic venues.

He serves as full Affiliate Professor of Epidemiology and Psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine. Dr Freeman is also an Adjunct Associate Professor of Forensic Medicine and Epidemiology at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Aarhus, Denmark.

He has more than 120 published scientific papers, books, and book chapters on forensic applications of epidemiology; crash-related injuries and death; general and specific causation; and a variety of other areas of interest. He also has a number of publications on the identification of logical fallacy and junk science in expert testimony for the legal profession.

He has served in US, Canadian, European and Australian courts as an expert in a variety of fields, including injury and death litigation; product liability; toxic tort litigation; tobacco litigation; medical negligence; and life expectancy, as well as both prosecution and defence expert in a number of homicide cases.

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Anita Gross

Anita Gross received degrees from the University of Toronto in the field of Physiotherapy, Curtain University in the field of Manipulation Therapy, and McMaster University in Design, Measurement and Evaluation.

Anita is a clinician, researcher and educator. She is an Associate Clinical Professor at McMaster University and lecturer in advance orthopaedic manipulative physical therapy for University of Western Ontario and the Canadian Physiotherapy Association. She coordinates the Cervical Overview Group, a group that conducts and maintains systematic reviews for the Cochrane Collaboration on neck pain. She chairs the Head and Neck, Arm, Hand (HaNSA) Research Group at McMaster University, School of Rehabilitation Sciences. Her most recent work relates to the International Collaboration on Neck (ICON) project – a multidisciplinary group who are synthesizing evidence about the management of neck pain, including practice patterns and opinions from various health disciplines.

She has over 80 peer reviewed publications and has been an invited speaker at a number of international conferences.

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Morag Heighway
After 25 years as a technical claims manager for the general insurer Aviva, handling all levels of bodily injury claims, Morag now works for IPRS Group, an independent musculoskeletal rehabilitation company who specialise in elite sports injury management and the broader sphere of musculoskeletal injury rehabilitation, providing solutions for elite sports and several major blue chip corporate organisations, as well as a number of local government and public service bodies. 

During her time with Aviva, Morag spearheaded the insurer’s proactive rehabilitation strategy and was significantly involved in several initiatives helping to bring greater co-operation between the parties in the best interests of injured claimants: for instance, acting as ABI representative in co-editing the 2007 Revised Rehabilitation Code, alongside Ian Walker and Amanda Stevenson, on behalf of APIL and working with the Vocational Rehabilitation Association (VRA) to establish the VRA Standards. After leaving Aviva in 2009, Morag was commissioned by the UK Rehabilitation Council to draft the UKRC Rehabilitation Standards, funded by the Department for Work and Pensions. Morag is also a longstanding member of the IUA/ABI Rehabilitation Working Party and is currently a UKRC Council Board Member and Vice-President of the Bodily Injury Claims Management Association (BICMA), which  exists to promote and facilitate the improvement of quality of life of accident victims through early intervention and rehabilitation, and by promoting co-operation and improved claims handling between claimants’ representatives and insurers.

In this last role, Morag chairs BICMA’s Whiplash Working Group, who have been working collaboratively for the last 18 months to try to find a way to promote widespread co-operation between insurers and lawyers to support early access to treatment/therapy for genuine ‘whiplash’ claimants needing intervention to support their recovery.

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Evan Katz
Dr Evan Katz has been in chiropractic/physical rehabilitation practice for the past ten years, in Boulder, Colorado.

He has published research papers focused on quantifying cervical spine injuries associated with car crashes and trauma. As a practicing clinician, his main area of interest has been identifying and establishing treatment to help patients suffering from whiplash injuries, most commonly the loss of the cervical lordosis and instability.
He has presented to the Colorado Senate as an expert on whiplash as it relates to personal injury claims and has been recognised as an expert in whiplash injuries in the courts.

Dr Katz brings his unique combination of active clinical practice and research to his presentation, focusing on the loss of the cervical curve and instability. He uses specific diagnostic imaging, such as the digital motion x-ray, to visualise and identify pathologies that are associated with whiplash in the cervical spine.

Dr Katz has been involved with multiple healthcare boards and chiropractic associations in the USA.

 

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Richard Lewis
Richard Lewis was educated at West Mon School, Pontypool, and Lincoln College, Oxford. After obtaining a first class degree from Oxford University and completing the Law Society examinations, he joined the solicitors firm of Norton Rose in the City of London. However, he interrupted his employment to take up a position on the Faculty at Northwestern Law School at the university in Chicago. He never returned to practice. He joined the University of Wales in 1974 and, apart from further periods of time spent in North America, he has remained resident in Cardiff. Has seen the Law School grow to one of the largest and most important in the UK. In December 2008 it was rated the seventh best Law School in the UK. by the Government in its national assessment of the quality of research.

Richard has published extensively in the areas of accident compensation, and public and private insurance. He is the author of the award-winning book dealing with periodical payment of damages, Structured Settlements: The Law And Practice, having previously written Compensation For Industrial Injury.  His book Deducting Benefits From Damages For Personal Injury, published by the Oxford University Press, examines the relationships between different compensation schemes. He has also written various social security law publications, and is currently an editor of both the Journal of Law and Society and the Industrial Law Journal. Having contributed over a hundred articles to academic and professional journals, he is a well known speaker at conferences, particularly those dealing with personal injury.

Richard was the first person to receive from Cardiff University the senior doctoral degree of Doctor of Laws (LLD). The degree was awarded in 2007 for his books and other publications which “represent a substantial contribution to knowledge.”

Richard is the Course Director for the Law of Tort, a foundation first year subject. He is also Director of Overseas Recruitment and often represents the Law School abroad.

 

Richard’s publications include Deducting Benefits From Damages For Personal Injury (2000);  Litigation Costs and Before-the-Event Insurance: The Key to Access to Justice? (2011); The Politics And Economics Of Tort Law: Judicially Imposed Periodical Payments Of Damages (2006) and Tort Personal Injury Claims Statistics: Is There a Compensation Culture In The United Kingdom? (2006).

 

 

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Andrew Miller
As an automotive engineer with over 25 years’ experience in design and development, Andrew Miller directs Thatcham’s Research department on behalf of UK motor insurers to reduce claims costs in three areas: safety and crash performance, repair technologies and vehicle security; and to provide accurate vehicle risk assessments within the Group Ratings the company provides on behalf of the UK insurance market.

Andrew works closely with the insurance industry, the UK government, NGOs and other trade bodies to ensure that Thatcham’s long-term research work is effective in reducing the human and financial costs associated with vehicle safety and vehicle crime, and in providing cost effective repair information and knowledge to the repair industry.

Andrew is Company Secretary and board member of the European consumer crash testing safety organisation Euro NCAP, which publicly rates new vehicles on behalf of the consumer. He is also a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers and the Institute of Directors.

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Nigel Partridge
Nigel started his career in law at Lyons Davidson, since qualifying as a solicitor in 1990. He was made Partner in 1994.

Nigel initially worked in the Claimant Personal Injury Department in Bristol, before being invited to set up the Plymouth office in 1991; being a proud Plymouthian, he accepted the challenge. While there, Nigel gradually moved from claimant to defendant work and therefore holds a very balanced view of the whole of the personal injury industry. In recent years, his career has gone full circle, in that his work is now largely based in Bristol.

Nigel is charged with providing technical and training support to both his claimant and defendant colleagues. Nigel is the author of many Lyons Davidson training guides and has made numerous successful appearances in the Court of Appeal, in areas as diverse as credit hire, civil procedure, social security benefits and liability for private rights of way.

He is a regular speaker at external, as well as Lyons Davidson’s own, conferences.

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Peter Revell
Peter joined Lyons Davidson in 1994 as a trainee solicitor and qualified in 1996. He graduated from the London School of Economics and had a previous successful career as a financial adviser. In 1989, he was elected as a County Councillor, where he served for a term of four years as one of the youngest councillors. Peter initially worked in the claimant private client personal injury department, where he established the Lyons Davidson in-house advocacy team which he now manages. He is also the partner in charge of Lyons Davidson’s cost department (Meruit Costs) and is a cost expert within the firm, particularly in relation to Conditional Fee Agreements and Collective Conditional Fee Agreements.

Peter’s hobbies include tennis, skiing and collecting old bottles. Last year ran the London Marathon for the brain injury charity Headway.

Oskar Riedmeyer

Oskar studied at the Law Schools of the Universities of Munich and Regensburg and was admitted to the Munich Bar in Germany in 1989. He was a partner at Lechner & Partner in Munich between 1989 and 2009. Since January 2010, he has been a partner with Dr Eick & Partner, a highly specialised law firm in tort and insurance law with offices in Hamm, Bochum, Erfurt, Dresden and Munich.

He has specialised in Road Traffic Law, including Personal Injury Law for 23 years and was appointed by the Munich Bar as Specialist in Road Traffic Law (Fachanwalt für Verkehrsrecht) in 2005.

Oskar is Vice-President of the German Bar Association in Berlin and has been a member of the Board of the Department for Traffic Law of the German Lawyers Association since 2000. He was legal adviser to the ADAC (the German Motor Association) between 2004 to 2010. He is also a member of the Board of the Institute for European Traffic Law in Luxembourg and was a member of the Board of PEOPIL (Pan European Organisation for Personal Injury Lawyers) in Birmingham, UK, from 2005 to 2009. He is co-editor of the monthly Journal of Tort Law (Zeitschrift für Schadensrecht – zfs).

Oskar has lectured on compensation claims after road traffic accidents at the Deutsche Anwaltakademie (German Lawyers School), the Institute for European Traffic Law, PEOPIL, ADAC and the German Bar Association.

Bernie Rowe

Bernie became Chairman of Lyons Davidson Ltd in 2011.  For 25 years before then, he was head of its Insurance Litigation Practice, which acts for claimant and defendant policyholders in all types of legal disputes.

Bernie has had a lifelong interest in motoring law and motor claims. The early years of his career were spent in the traffic and coroners courts across Yorkshire and the North East. In time, this led to Bernie’s specialising in motor personal injury and fatal accident claims, initially for insurers but then for Legal Expense-funded claimants. Panel meetings arranged by the legal expense provider DLP led to the creation of the Motor Accident Solicitors’ Society, MASS. On MASS’s formation in 1991, Bernie became its first Chairman and then served as Treasurer for another eight years. MASS began its life campaigning for better enforcement of RTA insurance laws, better information about motor law at schools and colleges, and a campaign concerning civil justice reforms and the Small Claims Court.

Bernie’s interest in motor claims inevitably led him to take a special interest in the cause, management and treatment of whiplash injuries. Lyons Davidson’s first International Whiplash Conference in 1997 saw the world’s leading experts on whiplash research in Bristol. This led to further conferences on motor injury related topics such as PTSD, Whiplash (2000 and 2003), Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain, and other topics such as amputations and prosthetics.

Bernie has previously served as Bristol Law Society Council Member, as a Deputy District Judge and currently he is Treasurer of the Bodily Injury Claims Management Association, BICMA.

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Donna Scully

Donna is the Chairman of Motor Accident Solicitors’ Society (MASS). She was born in Dublin and qualified as a solicitor in the UK in 1995. She worked originally in London at Mishcon de Reya and Jeffrey Green Russell Solicitors, amongst others, before setting up a Personal Injury department at Carpenters Solicitors in 1997. Carpenters is a leading provider of claims services to the insurance industry.  On the legal side, Carpenters have built a reputation for an ethical approach to personal injury claims with a strong team of experienced lawyers.  Carpenters employ over 300 people.

Donna has been a member of the Management Committee of MASS since 2004.  She took up the role of Chairman in November 2010. Donna is a keen supporter of the victims of accidents and has long campaigned for their rights.  She heads up the MASS Campaign against the government’s proposed reforms to ATE.

Donna also has a keen interest in fighting fraud and has set up a Fraud Forum at MASS to get all the parties in the claims process to work together to fight fraud on the same front.

Donna is a long standing member of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL). She has been an Ambassador on the I Love Claims Advisory Board since its inception in 2010, working with other members of the insurance industry in the best interests of the consumer who has to make a claim.

Donna is the mother of 11-year-old twin boys and she tries to keep fit in the little free time she has!

Gunter P Siegmund

Dr Siegmund is a Professional Engineer and President of MEA Forensic Engineers & Scientists, a consulting company with offices in Vancouver, Los Angeles and Toronto.

He is also an Adjunct Professor in the School of Kinesiology at the University of British Columbia. Dr Siegmund’s research is focused on the biomechanics and neurophysiology of whiplash injury, with a special interest in human subject testing and the reflex responses of human neck muscles.

Hermann Steffan

 

Hermann is Professor in the Institute for Mechanics at the Technical University of Graz, where he lectures on static, dynamic and structural Mechanics, fluid mechanics, mechanisms, accident Mechanics, biomechanics and vehicle safety. He has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, in which he specialised in 3D simulation of compressible fluid flow.

In 1994, Hermann set up DSD (Dr Steffan Datentechnik) to research vehicle safety, mainly in the field of rear-end impacts. There are currently more than 20 employees working in the research group, looking at development of PC-CRASH, the Hyper-G sled and in several vehicle-related passive safety research projects. 

He has more than 150 publications to his name, and has been involved in numerous research projects, including whiplash prevention systems (1997 – 1999); reduction of neck injuries and their societal costs in rear-end collisions (1996 – 2000); development of new design and test methods for whiplash protection in vehicle collisions (2001 – 2004) and proposed reduction of car crash injuries through improved smart restraint development technologies. He was also the initiator and coordinator of development of the software PC-Crash and PC-Rect, now the most used software for accident reconstruction worldwide. He has several patents to his name and is also involved in the reconstruction of approximately 700 accidents cases a year for various courts and insurance companies, adding up to a total of 8,000 cases.

Hermann is also head of the Institute of Vehicle Safety at GUT.

Michelle Sterling

Professor Michele Sterling is Associate Director of the Centre of National Research on Disability and Rehabilitation Medicine (CONROD), The University of Qld and a NHMRC Senior Research Fellow.

Michele leads the Rehabilitation (Medicine and Allied Health) programme at CONROD. She is a musculoskeletal physiotherapist and a member of the Australian College of Physiotherapists. Her research focuses are: The biological and psychological factors underlying chronic pain development following minor injury, particularly whiplash associated disorders; The prediction of outcome following whiplash injury; Improving the timing and nature of interventions for musculoskeletal injury and pain; Translation of research findings to clinical practice.

Michele has received over $7 million in competitive research funding and has published over 80 papers and two books in the areas of whiplash and musculoskeletal pain. In early 2011, Michele co-organised an International Summit on Whiplash Associated Disorders, which was attended by key researchers in this area. The outcomes of the Summit have been recently published in Spine.

Jack Straw

Jack Straw MP is Member of Parliament for Blackburn, having previously served in successive senior Cabinet positions in Labour governments from 1997 to 2010.

Jack Straw is one of the most experienced British and European politicians. During his long career including continuous Cabinet-level roles from 1997-2010, he has taken a leading part in many momentous political decisions in both national and international politics. He has a reputation for clear thinking and professional, pragmatic good sense.

After a prominent radical role in national student politics in the 1960s, he qualified as a barrister and first entered Parliament as a Labour MP representing Blackburn in 1979. He had a number of Shadow Cabinet roles before becoming Home Secretary after the Labour Party’s 1997 election victory, and then Foreign Secretary in 2001 and Leader of the House of Commons and Lord Privy Seal in 2006. He served as Lord High Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice from 2007 until 2010.

Now again in Opposition, Jack Straw continues to play a leading role in national politics, not least in issues involving the UK’s Muslim population (his constituency Blackburn has a sizeable Muslim community). His deft personal style combines with his immense domestic and foreign policy insight (he was closely involved in key decisions before and after the intervention in Iraq) to make him a formidable and fascinating expert speaker.

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Beth Winkelstein

Beth is a Professor of Bioengineering and Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her BSE in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1993 and earned a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Duke in 1999.

She joined Penn’s faculty in 2002, after completing a post-doctoral fellowship with Dr Joyce DeLeo in Anaesthesiology & Pharmacology at Dartmouth, in the neuroimmunology of pain.

Dr Winkelstein’s research focuses on defining mechanisms of painful spine and joint injuries; mechanical and cellular mechanisms of chronic pain; mechanotransduction of pain; and potential diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.  She has pioneered several rat models of painful tissue injuries, which are the first painful neck injury models with clinically-relevant pain symptoms.

Her group implements rigorous engineering analyses in these in vivo systems to define biomechanical loading and relate those metrics to neuronal plasticity and cellular mechanisms that drive pain.  Her group is also developing new imaging approaches in ligament tissue biomechanics studies to understand subfailure micro- and macro-scale tissue responses.

Dr Winkelstein’s research has been recognised by awards from the Stapp Car Crash Conference, the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine, and the ASME.  She was awarded a Whitaker Young Investigator Award, NIH Career Award, NSF-CAREER, and the 2006 YC Fung Young Investigator Award for the most promising young bioengineer. She has been funded by the Whitaker Foundation, NSF, NHTSA, CDC, NIH, CSRS, DoD, and industry partners.  She serves on the editorial board for Spine and is the C-Editor of the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering. She has published over 75 peer-reviewed papers and eight book chapters.  Dr Winkelstein has served as primary research mentor for 17 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, as well as many undergraduates.  She is the faculty advisor for Penn’s chapter of BMES and is active in the ASME–BED, BMES and World Congress of Biomechanics.

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Bettina Zahnd-Sinzig
Bettina started her career at AXA Winterthur’s Accident Research department in 2004, after having graduated with a Master’s degree in science.

She began a PhD at the University of Zilina, focusing on the technical aspects of whiplash after rear-end collisions. At AXA, she was involved in different in-car technologies projects and worked on the technical part of the Crash Recorder product of AXA in Switzerland.

Since 2009, Bettina has been head of Accident Research and is responsible for the road-accident research and road-accident prevention activities of AXA in Switzerland.

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