Janessa Drake

Associate Professor, School of Kinesiology & Health Science, York University

Janessa Drake.
Dr. Janessa D.M. Drake received her PhD in Kinesiology from the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo in 2008. She was a faculty member in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Windsor from 2007-2009.

She has taught at the undergraduate level (Ergonomics and Injury Prevention, Advanced Biomechanics, and Research Concepts) and at the graduate level (signal processing, instrumentation, modelling, and applied biomechanics of human movement).

In 2009 Dr. Drake joined the School of Kinesiology & Health Science at York University. Currently, her research is focused on understanding the acute and time varying responses of the spine, associated injury mechanisms, and resulting pain pathways due to combined loading (multi-axis) exposures. To gain this understanding she uses primarily an in-vivo biomechanical testing approach. Research quantifying the spine's responses to these exposures is crucial in the effort to increase the ability for biomechanical models to represent biological responses, thus enabling injury prediction and prevention.

Dr. Drake has received funding from the Centre of Research Expertise for the Prevention of Musculoskeletal Disorders (CRE-MSD). She is an author on eight peer-reviewed journal articles, has presented more than 20 papers at conferences, and has supervised two undergraduate students.