Dear Sebastian,
I am pleased to apply to become a member of the ESMAC board and to participate more actively to the ESMAC. I attended the ESMAC Gait Course in Milan in 2001 and was a member of ESMAC for the first time in 2002. I was pleased to attend the ESMAC annual conferences as an opportunity to share the work of various research teams, including ours. Pediatrician and Professor of Physiology at the University of Lorraine, in Nancy, France, I have been involved in a posture and movement analysis laboratory in a rehabilitation centre since 1997 and in the EA3450 Development, adaptation and disability (DevAH) research team.
My main area of research is devoted to better understanding the pathophysiology and compensatory mechanisms for therapeutic orientation in the field of motor control, in particular in postural and walking disabilities of orthopedic or neurological origin. The use of different gait conditions is particularly developed during gait analyses in our laboratory to better differentiate compensatory mechanisms from primary gait deviations. Thus, new pathophysiological principles are being tested for rehabilitation for example in children with cerebral palsy.
As has often been said at ESMAC conferences, the use of clinical gait analysis to better understand the mechanisms of walking disability central nervous damage remains a major challenge and objective for ESMAC. I would be pleased to contribute, through ESMAC, to the development of gait analysis procedures and research designs to better achieve this objective. It would be a pleasure for me to be part of the science committee of the ESMAC board.
The French Society for Movement Analysis in Children and Adults (SOFAMEA), which I have chaired since 2015, is ready to collaborate better with ESMAC, which is why I also intend to help strengthen the link between the two societies.
Very cordially
Christian Beyaert