Faculty

Rui Li has served as associate clinical professor and director of the exercise science program at Bouvé College of Health Sciences since 2015. Her record combines deep engagement with diverse clinical populations in Boston and decades of experience as a leading researcher on health and fitness. Professor Li’s research focuses on exercise and nutrition as an intervention for chronic diseases, such as diabetes, obesity and arthritis. More specifically, she has investigated how different exercise protocols improve skeletal muscle function and cardiopulmonary capacity. Professor Li’s research also investigates how training and nutritional strategies improve fitness and enhance performance for general and athletic populations. With colleagues, Li has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles in top physiology and nutrition journals, such as the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition and Nutrition Research.

Education:

• PhD in Exercise, Nutrition and Preventative Health, Baylor University, 2008
• MS in Exercise Physiology, Tianjin University of Sport, 1996
• BS in Biology, Hebei Normal University, 1993

Research Interests:

• Exercise and nutritional interventions on metabolic disease prevention
• Training and nutritional strategies for health fitness and sport performance
• Exercise physiology, skeletal muscle function and nutritional intervention

Courses:

• Advanced Exercise Physiology
• Applied/Clinical Exercise Physiology
• Cardiopulmonary Physiology
• Applied Research Methods
• Introduction to Exercise, Fitness and Health

Dinesh John, PhD, joined Northeastern University in September 2012 as an associate professor in the Department of Health Sciences. Professor John is a trained exercise physiologist and an expert on application of wearable sensors to measure and modify physical behavior. His work is aimed at improving health outcomes through practical and meaningful integrations of technology. In support of this work, Professor John has collaborated with scientists from a wide range of fields, such as engineering, computer science, behavior change psychology and public health. These collaborations have been crucial to the development of tools that simplify sensor data processing and analysis. Professor John has served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator on grants from a variety of institutions, including the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. He has also published more than 30 peer-reviewed articles and has been invited to speak at a number of national and international conferences.

Education:

• PhD in Exercise Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
• MS in Exercise Science, Ithaca College
• BA in Economics and Politics, S.I.E.S. College of Arts, Sciences, and Commerce

Research Interests:

• Physical activity measurement
• Technology in health
• Wearable sensors
• Exercise physiology

Courses:

• Physical Activity and Exercise: Prescription, Measurement, and Testing
• Introduction to Exercise, Fitness and Health

Professor Stephen Intille has a joint appointment in the Bouvé College of Health Sciences and the Khoury College of Computer Sciences. In 1999, he received his PhD from MIT, where he worked on computational vision at the Media Laboratory for five years. After ten years as Technology Director of the House_n Research Consortium at MIT, Professor Intille joined Northeastern in 2010 to establish a new transdisciplinary PhD program in personal health informatics. His research centers on the development of novel healthcare technologies that incorporate ideas from ubiquitous computing, user-interface design, pattern recognition, behavioral science and preventive medicine. Specifically, Professor Intille’s work seeks to examine how algorithms that recognize everyday activity can drive the development of interactive technologies that support healthy aging and well-being. Among his other research interests, Professor Intille analyzes mobile technologies that permit longitudinal measurement of health behaviors and areas of human activity. He has been the principal investigator on sensor-enabled health technology grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, foundations and industry.

Education:

• PhD in Media Arts & Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1999
• SM in Media Arts & Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1994
• BSE in Computer Science & Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, 1992

Research Interests:

• Development and validation of innovative personal health informatics systems
• Measuring and motivating behavioral changes through interactive, mobile sensing
• The intersection of machine learning, behavioral theory and behavioral measurement methods and computing technology

Carmen Castaneda Sceppa, MD, PhD, FGSA is the dean of Bouvé College of Health Sciences and professor in the Department of Health Sciences. Her program of research seeks to transform the way we think about exercise, from a personal choice to preventative medicine. In particular, Dean Sceppa’s research addresses three areas: efficacy of exercise interventions on health risk factor reduction, translation of evidence-based exercise interventions to real-world applications and development of sustainable strategies for health promotion and optimal health. The knowledge acquired by Dean Sceppa’s research has informed the development of community-based interventions and guidelines that bridge the gap between research and practice. For example, her pioneer work on resistance exercise in older adults with kidney disease and diabetes was adopted by the American Diabetes Associated as a standard of care. Funding for Dean Sceppa’s research has been provided by the Brookdale Foundation, the International Life Sciences Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the National Space and Biomedical Research Institute and more. Dean Sceppa is also a co-principal investigator of Healthy Kids Healthy Futures, an intergenerational obesity prevention initiative that promotes physical activity and healthy eating in families and day care staff of young children between 3 to 8 years old. In addition to participatory community-based intervention research, she examines mechanisms associated with aging and health at the Northeastern Human Performance and Exercise Science Laboratory.

Education:

• PhD in Nutrition, Tufts University, 1994
• MD, Francisco Marroquin University, 1987
• BS, Del Valle University, 1983

Research Interests:

• Healthy aging
• Health promotion in the life cycle
• Nutrition and exercise
• Translational research